Wenger spots an injustice

Arsene Wenger has blamed Arsenal's Carling Cup exit on the decisions of referee Dermot Gallagher.

The Gunners crashed out of the semi-finals at Middlesbrough last night, losing the second leg 2-1 and the tie 3-1 on aggregate.

Martin Keown was sent off for hauling down Massimo Maccarone, while new £17.5million striker Jose Antonio Reyes scored an own-goal to round off a miserable full debut.

Arsenal manager Wenger had no complaints about the dismissal of Keown but was upset by Gallagher's failure to give Arsenal a penalty when Reyes was brought down by Mark Schwarzer and the official's refusal to take a stronger line with what he called a series of "professional fouls".

He said: "I don't think that we deserved to lose. Even with 10 men we were running the game. The referee missed a penalty and if we had scored that, we could have won.

"They cut our fluency down in the second half with a lot of professional fouls and I found it unfair that the referee did not intervene at all.

"It was the same players who repeatedly made the professional fouls in the middle of the park. That meant they were always able to come back with 11 against 10 and the referee did not react. I found it very difficult to accept."

Middlesbrough manager Steve McClaren insisted he did not see the penalty incident, which angered Wenger, but defended his players against the Frenchman's accusations.