Richards critical of referee Dowd

Micah Richards has criticised Phil Dowd’s decision to award Liverpool a penalty in their League Cup semi-final victory over Manchester City.

Richards and City were dumped out 3-2 on aggregate after drawing the second leg 2-2 at Anfield on Wednesday, with Steven Gerrard scoring the controversial spot kick to cancel out Nigel de Jong’s opener.

Craig Bellamy struck for Liverpool with 15 minutes to go, levelling after Edin Dzeko put the visitors ahead for the second time.

Richards was penalised when Daniel Agger’s shot rebounded off his foot and struck his arm, leading to referee Dowd awarding a penalty.

“I think the referee made a poor decision for the penalty, it’s hit my foot and gone onto my hand – I don’t know what he expects me to do with that,” Richards said.

“As a decision I wouldn’t say it cost us today but it played a massive part.”

“It’s hurting, everyone goes on about respecting the referees but it’s their decisions that are sometimes costing us.”

“I give my full support to the referees but those sort of decisions unless you’re 100 percent sure you shouldn’t really be giving them.”

Richards acknowledged City were not at their best in the match at Anfield and gave full credit to Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool side for progressing to the final.

“We tried to give 100 percent,” Richards said.

“We didn’t play as good as thought we could play tonight, we just didn’t get a grip of the game.”

“We scored two decent goals but they were always going to be a threat at home; coming here and beating them was always going be a hard task.”

“I think we lost it in the first game when we lost 1-0.”

“We can’t be too bitter Liverpool worked hard and in the end probably deserved the win. It was obviously an outstanding goal by Nigel he played very well for us today.”