The Football Association is looking into the comments made by Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers following his side's 2-1 Boxing Day defeat at Manchester City.
Rodgers, furious with a number of decisions made by the officials during the Barclays Premier League contest, appeared afterwards to question the integrity of its referee Lee Mason.
The manager said the officials' performance was ''horrendous'' and expressed his surprise that, in Mason, a referee from Bolton - barely 14 miles from Manchester - should have been in charge of the game.
''I was surprised we are playing in Manchester and have a referee from Greater Manchester,'' Rodgers said.
''I am sure we won't get (for) Liverpool-Man City someone from the Wirral.
''I thought they were horrendous in terms of performance.
''Hopefully we don't have another Greater Manchester referee again on a Liverpool-Manchester game.''
Of the many incidents which left Rodgers unhappy, the most notable was the one which saw Raheem Sterling flagged offside when he was at least two yards behind last defender Aleksandar Kolarov before racing through to face Joe Hart.
''The officials make mistakes, I just felt the mistakes made shouldn't have happened at this level. This is a big game,'' he added.
''It was a poor decision and of course Raheem goes through and scores.
''I thought we never got any decision. The linesman on the offside one - he wasn't even on the same cut of grass.
''If you're working at this level you have to get it right. It's not even a difficult one.
''It is a perfectly-timed run and he is given offside when he is through one-on-one on goal. These are big moments in big games.
''There is another incident when Luis (Suarez) doesn't get a free-kick when Joleon Lescott went right through him.
''It is arguable it is a penalty at the end. Luis Suarez can't jump because he (Lescott) is tugging at his shirt.''
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article