Hughes insists Cisse has only himself to blame after costly sending-off

Mark Hughes admitted that referee Mark Clattenburg had no choice but to send off Djibril Cisse during QPR’s 2-1 defeat to Wolves on Saturday.

With Rangers leading 1-0, Cisse was sent off for reacting to a tackle from Roger Johnson by raising his hands to the Wolves defender, and was shown a straight red card.

It proved the turning point as Wolves took advantage of their superior numbers to score twice in the second half, but Hughes insisted Cisse had only himself to blame.

“Obviously we were disappointed with the initial challenge, given Djibril’s playing history and the injuries that he has had,” said Hughes.

“He reacted to that, and if he had kept it to the initial reaction when he jumped up and confronted the guy he would have been okay, but unfortunately he went back and raised his hands towards the guy’s neck area, and we all know you can’t do that. The referee had to send him off.”

Hughes was also disappointed by the manner of his side’s defending for both Wolves goals, although he admits he saw enough positives going forward to be encouraged for the future.

“I was really pleased with what we were producing. I thought the interplay between Djibril, Bobby (Zamora) and Adel (Taarabt) was good, and augured well for the future,” he added.

“If we had 11 against 11 I think we would have won the game quite comfortably. But we conceded two poor goals. We’d done really well defensively, but then we let ourselves down a little bit for the first goal, and maybee we needed to be a little bit stronger in terms of our challenges for the second one. With one less guy on the pitch it was always going to be a hard task for us.”