By Mark Smith

23rd Feb, 2020 | 11:00am

'One gripe I had' - Mark Bowen unhappy with one figure in Reading defeat at Leeds

Reading manager Mark Bowen was unhappy with referee Jarrod Gillett in his side’s 1-0 defeat against Leeds United on Saturday.

The Royals boss claimed that he let it be known that his side didn’t want any advantages, and would rather have been given set-pieces such as direct free-kicks.

Bowen pointed out a couple of incidents towards the end of the game, also claiming Liam Moore was naive when not going down under pressure from Liam Cooper in the box.

Leeds have been vulnerable from set-pieces in the past couple of months, so it is quite clear why Bowen wanted his side to have those opportunities.

“One gripe I had – when you come to places like this you don’t want advantage – if there is a free-kick to be given you take that because you work on your free-kicks,” he said via Berkshire Live.

“I told the fourth official to tell the referee we don’t want any advantages – he told the ref but with five minutes to go we had two possible free-kicks 30 yards out and he played on.

“I wonder where that comes from.”

Leeds captain Cooper was certainly lucky to get away with his grappling in the box towards the end of the game, but Moore staying on his feet certainly took away the possibility of it being a spot-kick.

Reading’s official Twitter account also took a problem with that challenge from the Scotsman, releasing a post questioning the decision that was laughed off by fans.

It seems strange that a team wouldn’t encourage the advantage rule given that they could capitalise on that by creating chances, but it was about time Leeds were on the right side of a so-called dodgy decision, and we move on to Middlesbrough on Wednesday.

In other Leeds United news, these Whites fans were blown away by this one player in the 1-0 victory