Wigan Athletic chief on Charlie Wyke red card and penalty shouts during defeat to Portsmouth

Latics took the lead on 27 minutes through Martial Godo, after sublime build-up play from Charlie Wyke and Scott Smith.

However, two goals in the space of six minutes just before the interval, from Regan Poole and Paddy Lane, turned the game on its head.

But that only told part of the tale, with Charlie Wyke being red-carded four minutes after the restart for a rash lunge on Marlon Pack.

The striker looked shell-shocked as he left the field, and the drama spilled into the technical area, with Latics No.2 Graham Barrow being yellow-carded along with his Portsmouth counterpart Jon Harley as tempers frayed.

Wyke - and team-mate Thelo Aasgaard - had earlier had penalty shouts turned down by the officials, who made it an unwanted hat-trick in the second period when they failed to spot what appeared to be a clear handball in the Pompey box.

Maloney, though, resisted any temptation to blame Mr Finnie and his team, focusing instead on the things he and his side could control.

On the red card, he said: "At the time, I thought Charlie slipped and it was a little harsh.

"But that was just the view I had, and I've only seen it once back, I need to see another angle.

"Look, it wasn't a great tackle, and it gives the referee a decision to make.

"I can understand why the referee has made the decision."

On the penalty shouts, he said: "I haven't seen the ones with Thelo and Charlie in the box, I've only seen the handball.

"Yeah, look, I think the referee has probably got that one wrong, in my opinion.

"But I don't complain about referees too much, these things happen, you can't change what's happened.

"We knew it was going to be a big fight with 10 men, and I thought we did that, even with 10 men, we continued to take the game to them.

"There's ways to lose games...last weekend (after the 4-1 defeat at Bristol Rovers), I felt completely differently.

"We just have to improve how we defend the box, because we made it far too easy for them to score - especially considering how good our goal was.

"But the effort the team gave, and the quality they tried to bring with 10 men, I feel very different this weekend to last weekend."