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Regis Le Bris admitted Dan Ballard’s red card for hair pulling was “hard to digest” as Sunderland’s hopes of European football next season were dented by a 1-1 draw at Wolves.
Sunderland led through Nordi Mukiele against already-relegated Wolves when referee Paul Tierney dismissed Ballard, who was adjudged to have tugged the long braids of Tolu Arokodare in an aerial duel.
The sending off meant Sunderland had to play with 10 men for more than an hour and Wolves capitalised, ending a goal drought stretching back to mid-March when Santiago Bueno equalised in the second half.
Le Bris’ side remain 12th in the Premier League and to rub salt into the wound, Ballard faces a three-match ban that will prematurely end his season for an offence that is deemed violent conduct.
But Le Bris said: “We understand the rule and I think Paul Tierney is a great referee but the execution of the rule is very hard to digest because I don’t think it is intentional and violent conduct.
“We don’t want to be controversial, we are here to help the game, many people are watching the Premier League and we want to be clean in our behaviours, but football is football.
“It is a duel in the air and with a tall striker (who weighs) 100kg more or less, Ballard is massive as well, so the ball in the air 20 times in a game, many things can happen.
“If the rule is the rule, when you have a striker with long hair, you will have problems because you can’t defend. It was more or less the case. They executed the rule but it’s a bit hard to digest.”
Michael Keane and Lisandro Martinez have also fallen foul of the rule this season – the former for pulling Arokodare’s hair – with Everton and Manchester United failing to have the red cards overturned.
Le Bris, whose side had conceded nine goals in their last two matches, will consider whether to launch an appeal but he was at a loss to explain how these types of offences can be avoided in future.
The Frenchman added: “First of all, we’ll see who is the striker. If he has long hair, we have a problem. If they play long, be careful and we’ll see.
“Sometimes a handball is the same, it’s probably a grey area and with this rule, we are at that stage where you have to manage the rule to make it clean for different situations.”
Wolves were booed off at full-time as they remained rooted to the foot of the table, while Rob Edwards’ decision to withdraw Hugo Bueno towards the end in place of Angel Gomes was unpopular with fans.
Edwards, who revealed Bueno had not trained much this week because of a knee problem, said: “I’m very frustrated, we all are.
“I understand the situation at the moment. We’ve been relegated, we’re bottom of the league, we’ve drawn a game against 10 men off the back of three defeats in a row, I’m going to take it.
“It doesn’t concern me. We’ve got three more games where we’ve got to get more results and we can turn things around. It will be all the more rewarding when we are able to turn things around.”
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