Red card irks Curbs

Alan Curbishley was irritated by Danny Murphy's sending off against Arsenal.

Murphy was sent off 20 minutes from time as The Addicks sought an equaliser after Jose Antonio Reyes had scored for the visitors.

The midfielder was dismissed for dissent after angrily bouncing the ball in front of Bennett, who showed Murphy a second yellow card.

Though Curbishley was upset with Murphy's reaction, he was far from impressed by the display of officiating from Bennett.

"I think he's a local referee and perhaps because of that he didn't want to show us any favouritism, which he certainly didn't," said Curbishley.

"I've got no time for him (Murphy) getting himself sent off especially at that stage of the game when we'd just gone a goal down.

"If you're already on a yellow card you can't bounce the ball up and down like that, but is that really worse than Francesc Fabregas' tackle on Gonzalo Sorondo though? That's what irritates me.

"The referees ask for managers' advice and mine would be to forget on the dissent stuff and get really tough on the professional stuff that goes on - we'd all be a lot happier.

"But I don't want to hide behind that. Arsenal showed on occasions what a good side they are - they created more chances and deserved to win."

The defeat was Charlton's seventh in eight Premiership games, but after making six changes to his team, Curbishley was still able to take some positives from the 1-0 scoreline.

He added: "I asked for more passion and work rate and I think I got that.

"Now we just need to try and get some of the football back that we were playing at the start of the season to add to that.

"I just wanted to get six new faces in that had been unaffected by the run we've been in, so they would come into the game looking forward to it. It worked."