Fleetwood Town boss slams ‘terrible’ referee – says Sheffield Wednesday fans ‘got the better’ of him

The Owls and the Cod Army fought out a 1-1 draw at Hillsborough on Saturday that puts them both in the hat for the fifth round of the competition, but meant that a replay will need to be played early next month.

Promise Omochere opened the scoring for Brown’s side in the second half, but an own goal from Josh Earl made sure that the game finished level after 90 minutes.

It was tightly-fought at S6, but the visiting manager felt that his hard were hard done by, suggesting that the referee was swayed by the home support during the game.

“It’s hard coming to a place like this,” the Fleetwood boss said afterwards. “Especially when the referee had a terrible performance like he did today… We need those big decisions, and it’s easy enough making those decisions on a small club like Fleetwood because it doesn’t impact us - but it really does. I feel like the crowd got the better of the referee today.”

In terms of his team’s performance, however, Brown was full of praise.

He said of their showing, “It was a great performance by the lads and a good reaction after the Portsmouth game, which was a little disappointing. This is against a top League One side, who have fantastic players, a great stadium and a fanbase and we showed who we are today.

“They had a couple of big units on the park which we had to match up with but for us, but I felt comfortable a number of times that we were creating chances. We didn’t make their goalkeeper work hard enough - the second-half goal just pretty much summed our performance up.”

No date for the replay has been officially confirmed yet, but it’s expected that the tie will take place between the two games against Plymouth Argyle and Ipswich Town in League One early next month.

Wednesday play host to Plymouth on Saturday afternoon at 3pm for the chance to go top of the table.

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