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London - Queens Park Rangers manager Neil Warnock hit out at the Football Association on Thursday after the club's attempt to appeal Joey Barton's red card was turned down.
Barton and QPR had sought to overturn the midfielder's sending off against Norwich City last week, when he was dismissed for violent conduct after a confrontation with Bradley Johnson.
Barton later claimed Johnson had duped match officials, but the FA upheld the sending off, a ruling Warnock branded "farcical" when contrasted with a recent incident involving Fulham's Clint Dempsey and Liverpool's Craig Bellamy.
"I am not surprised but it is difficult to accept when you see what (Clint) Dempsey did recently in comparison with Joey Barton," he said. "It is farcical, isn't it?
"Whenever you see something happen on the field of play that warrants a red card, if the linesman sees that offence, they flag and flag until the referee goes towards him, tells him what he has seen and then the lad is sent off.
"Now this linesman carried on and on and on and would not have stopped if Joey Barton had got the ball, gone past a few players and whacked it in the far post.
"I know they have got to look after themselves but I feel really let down as a manager and a club that three invisible people can look at that and not look at the linesman and take that into consideration.
"If he did see it, why did he not flag immediately and keep his flag up?"
Warnock also suggested players from bigger clubs gain more favourable decisions after Chelsea's Frank Lampard escaped a red card for a wild lunge on Wolves' Adam Hammill at the weekend.
"If that had been Joey, (Wolves' Karl) Henry or any Tom, Dick and Harry, would that have been a red card or a yellow card?" he said.
"There would have been a lynching of them. At the moment I just don't see where the disciplinary commission are going."
