Plymouth manager Steven Schumacher said he was fuming regarding the failure to award a foul against Town defender George Edmundson for a foul on sub Mustapha Bundu just before half-time, moments before the Blues levelled during this afternoon’s 3-2 Town win at Portman Road.
"I thought the lads played unbelievably well and I just said to them I am proud of them, the efforts they put in, the way that we stuck to the plan today,” Schumacher said regarding his team’s display.
"We knew coming to Ipswich Town that they have been the best team in the league with Leicester and we knew we were going to have spells where we had to stick together and defend.
"But we did that. In the first half we defended really well and counter-attacked with a purpose.
"Our goal was outstanding. From an interception, a nice breakaway and Morgan [Whittaker] scores a brilliant goal, so I was really pleased with how the whole of the half was going.
"And then I’m obviously fuming over how we didn’t get a free-kick right on the edge of their box at a really pivotal moment in the game because what happened next was Ipswich went down the other end, got a corner and scored from it.
"So that was a was a huge turning point that went against us. It was a refereeing decision I still can’t get my head around.
"We watched it back at half-time, there’s clear contact on Mustapha and Mustapha said ‘Gaffer, he clipped my ankle’.
"I spoke to [referee] Gavin [Ward] and the linesman and they said they couldn’t see it. I think they were the only two people in the ground that couldn’t see it.
"James [Linington], the fourth official, was there next to me and said that it looked like a foul, he said it felt like a foul, so in everybody else’s eyes it was a foul.
"I’m not wanting to see people get sent off, you could argue it was a red card because Edmundson was the last men, but there were two covering defenders.
"It could have been a free-kick or a penalty, I don’t know, I’m not arguing that, but what it definitely was was a foul because what happened as well as Ipswich scoring immediately after it was George Edmundson got booked in the second half and [if he’d been booked for the first-half incident] should have been sent off.
"We ended up playing with 10 men because we had an injury [to Bundu, who went off on 84 with all their substitution windows having been used] but the ended up with 11 on the pitch, which was probably a bit fortunate.”