Sam Allardyce Laments Poor Refereeing Decisions After Everton's FA Cup 3rd Round Defeat to Liverpool

Everton manager Sam Allardyce believes that refereeing decisions were partly to blame as his side were knocked out of the FA Cup following their 2-1 defeat in the third round against Liverpool. 

Allardyce was particularly aggrieved with the awarding of Liverpool's penalty to open the scoring, given after Mason Holgate was adjudged to have hauled down Adam Lallana, before James Milner converted the resulting spot kick. 

Everton however rallied in the second period, scoring a deserved equaliser through Gylfi Sigurdsson. The Toffees however couldn't hang on for a replay as Virgil van Dijk scored a late winner on his debut, although Allardyce was more annoyed with the decisions the referee gave throughout the game. 

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Speaking post-match to BBC Sport, he said: "I didn't think it was a penalty, but there is not much we can do now. 

"For me, I thought some of the fouls they got and bookings we got and fouls we didn't get was very harsh by the referee in terms of consistency. There were similar incidents, similar penalties."

The defeat for Everton was their third in succession and have only scored two goals in their last five games in all competitions.

Despite the loss on their second visit to Anfield in the space of a month, Allardyce was pleased with the performance of his side, and thought they deserved a replay to justify their efforts.

He continued, stating: "At the end of the day, we have given everything we could and we tried our very best today.

"We gave everything we could today and in the end we were disappointed we did not take them back to our place. It is a shame after all that effort."

Everton now only have the Premier League to focus on, with their next game a tough assignment away to Tottenham a week on Saturday, which could see the debut of new signing Cenk Tosun.

The Turkish forward completed his £27m move from Besiktas to Everton on Friday, and the move was announced at half time in their game against Liverpool.