Neil Warnock says Premier League referee was so unjust he could have ‘thumped’ him

Cardiff suffered a heartbreaking defeat to Chelsea that left them five points from safety

Cardiff City manager Neil Warnock has accelerated his criticism of the “Premier League having the worst officials in the world” and by labelling referees’ chief Mark Riley as a "robot" who does not know the game.

Cardiff suffered a heartbreaking defeat to Chelsea, having led until the 85th-minute, with Cesar Azpilicueta equalising from a clearly offside position, before Ruben Loftus-Cheek compounded Warnock’s misery with a last-gasp winner.

The result left Warnock’s side five points from safety and the manager believes the scale of poor decisions should see Riley, the General Manger of the Professional Game Match Officials, placed under scrutiny.

“When I came in yesterday, my wife said to me: ‘ darling, if you had wanted to thump the referee and linesman, I wouldn’t have stopped you’. It was so unjust," Warnock told TalkSPORT.

The FA may take action against the 70-year-old for the comment.

“Riley was like a robot,” Warnock told TalkSPORT. “He didn’t have any feeling. He knew the laws but didn’t know the game. That is what they are all like.

“The linesman says ‘I am sorry, I was blinded’. What absolute rubbish. What good is that? He knows what he has done, he has seen it back. We’re having too many honest mistakes.

“You just feel it’s such an injustice, and I’ve felt like that ever since Christmas.

“You almost begin to think, is it me? Is it payback time for all the years I’ve shouted at referees? Have they all got together now and said, ‘let’s get him out of this place’?

“I used to think that about one or two refs, but when I speak to them they’re not like that and I know they’re not like that.

“I just don’t think they’re educated enough at the top level. I don’t think things will change now until Mike Riley goes, which is very unlikely because he’s got himself rooted so far in.

Neil Warnock confronts the officials after the game (Getty)

“They should have better coaching. Mike Riley is in charge of referees but as a referee he was like a robot, he had no feelings and he didn’t know anything about the game.

“Like Bill Shankly used to say: ‘You know the law but you don’t know the game’.

“That’s how Mike Riley was, and he’s training all his referees now. They’re all the same, they’re trying to be robots.”

“You could imagine what the dressing room was like. We played so well and I’m really proud of them, but once again we’ve been kicked in the teeth.

“We’ve worked our socks off for three weeks to get where we were, because we thought we could beat Chelsea and we did everything right, but then a human error like this?

“That could be the decision that costs us everything, because I thought we could put pressure on the other clubs, but now we’re battling against the odds again.”

Cardiff now travel to Manchester City on Wednesday, with fixtures against Liverpool and Manchester United still to come in their remaining seven games.