Sam Allardyce slams Leeds United penalty decisions with divisive Newcastle United claim

Luke Ayling gave Leeds an early lead before a Patrick Bamford penalty miss and two successful Callum Wilson spot-kicks saw Newcastle lead 2-1 before Rasmus Kristensen’s deflected effort made it 2-2 in the closing stages.

Junior Firpo was sent off in stoppage time for a second bookable offence as Leeds ended the match with 10 men.

But Allardyce felt his side would have won the game had it not been for Nick Pope’s penalty save from Bamford.

“Scoreline should have been a victory for us today,” Allardyce said. “The commitment and spirit we showed, if we had gone 2-0 up, the way we defended apart from the silly penalty, we would have won.

“The fact that we allowed ourselves to get knocked back by missing the penalty and conceding a penalty, but the way we stayed in the game was very good. Going 2-1 down, then coming back and scoring.

“We shot ourselves in the foot quite often but showed enough to say that if we cut out the mistakes we can get three points.

“We are playing third in the league and should have won it in my opinion. Our fault, why we didn’t win, was giving two penalties away and missing one. Even when we got a player sent off we defended extremely well to get the point.”

Allardyce’s frustration was aimed largely at the three penalties in the game. While the Leeds boss had no complaints with the referee’s decision to award the spot-kicks, he was critical of his side’s decision making inside the penalty area.

“We go shoot ourselves in the foot by giving the penalty away, then another one, then get a player sent off,” he told BBC Sport. “In between that we score a great second goal for the equaliser.

“It is a tremendous point considering the circumstances we’ve left ourselves in that we shouldn’t have done.

“I was talking from last week about staying on your feet and we still haven’t listened. We can’t afford to be making tackles like we did today.

“We defended exceptionally well, we went down to 10 men and this is Newcastle, third in the league. We’re standing up to be counted but a lot of what we’ve done today was our own fault not Newcastle’s play.”