Sun stunned by penalty award

City defender adamant it was a fair challenge on McSheffrey

Last updated: 1st April 2008   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Sun stunned by penalty award

Sun: Unhappy with decision

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Sun Jihai admits he 'could not believe' a penalty was awarded against him in Manchester City's defeat at Birmingham City.

Sven Goran Eriksson's side had pulled the score back to 2-1 at St Andrews when Elano converted a penalty after Benjani had been brought down.

But with 13 minutes remaining, Chinese defender Sun was penalised by referee Rob Styles following a challenge with Birmingham winger Gary McSheffrey.

The two players went shoulder-to-shoulder in the box and Sun, while not blaming the decision for City's eventual 3-1 defeat, feels it was the wrong call from Styles.

"The ball was in our penalty area and had crossed to where I was," Sun told the Manchester Evening News.

Walk away

"I turned around and chased the ball with McSheffrey, and it was in front of me.

"He went for the ball and tried to obviously push me, but I just used my shoulder for a 50/50.

"I tried to do my job as normal. When I heard the whistle, I thought he was diving maybe, but the referee pointed to the spot.

"I could not believe it. Even somebody who knows a little bit about football wouldn't think that was a penalty.

"I couldn't do anything about it, so I had to walk away. It's the only thing I could have done and that decision killed the game off for us.

"Having said that, we didn't perform as well as we could have, and the reason we lost wasn't just down to the referee. We should have done better."

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