Blues manager Kieran McKenna says he disagrees “in the absolute entirety” with the FA’s decision to ban left-back Leif Davis for three matches for violent conduct relating to an incident in the Leicester City match last week.

Davis was banned for a clash with Foxes defender Caleb Okoli in which the 26-year-old was adjudged to have pulled the Italian’s hair, an incident missed by referee John Busby.

While the player accepted the charge, the club appealed the length of the ban but were unsuccessful and the former Leeds man served the first match of this three-game suspension today.

“I disagree with it in the absolute entirety. Every single bit of the decision,” McKenna said when asked for his thoughts on the matter.

“I think if you look at the incident and you look at it from the angles in the penalty area and the context of the penalty area, it’s on a corner, if you look at it closely, Ivan Azon’s being held in a headlock on the six-yard box, Leif’s being illegally blocked by Oliver Skipp, because Leif’s the back zone and it’s his job to get free and go and try and contest the ball.

“He’s getting illegally blocked by Oliver Skipp. Wes [Burns] is trying to mark Okoli. Wes gets illegally blocked, which frees Okoli to go round the back post.

“When you look at the close angles, Leif at no point even lifts an eye towards where Okoli is coming. He’s not marking him, he’s [zonal]. Okoli gets free around the back post and Leif’s being grappled by Skipp and puts his arm amongst all of the grappling in the penalty box and grabs what he can find as he’s trying to get leverage on a player’s shoulder, on a shirt to go and attack the ball.

“At no point looks in the direction of the player. Impossible to know which player it was or what hair the player who was jumping with him would have and then he heads the ball out of the box.

“Of course, from some angles it looks like the player’s hair may have been held momentarily, completely accidentally with no excessive forward and in the context of a corner where everyone is pulling and grappling and grabbing for each other.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen that given as a decision or a penalty. We’ve looked through for incidents of hair-pulling and they’re usually on a counter-attack. I saw the one in the Premier League with Michael Keane where he’s behind the Wolves striker and he’s marking him and he can see the ball all the way, and you have to be careful with that.

“This situation is completely different, so for it to be one of the few cases in the history of the EFL or the Premier League where the referee re-referees the game on video and picks out that incident and reports it for violent conduct, I thought was an amazing decision.

“We’re obviously really disappointed with it and we lose a really important player for 30 per cent of our remaining games on top of the other decisions last week.

“I disagree with the decision, we disagree with it as a club. That’s clear. What else is clear is that we can’t change it now, so it’s about sticking together as a group, as a club, reacting in the right way, trusting other players to come into the team and really going at the end of the season the best we can.

“That’s what we’ve spoken about as a group in the last couple of days — not letting anything externally affect us any more than missing the player, finding the right response to all the situations over the last week. That’s what we’re going to have to do as a club now over the next couple of months.”

McKenna was asked whether him speaking out about the penalty incidents in the Leicester and Stoke matches might be tied into the charge against Davis?

“No comment,” McKenna said after considering a few moments. “It’s not where my focus has been.”

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