Hylton: Raynes can have no complaints over clear elbow

The United centre half, who had been a former team-mate of Hylton’s while at Oxford United earlier in their careers, received his marching orders on 82 minutes for flattening the Luton forward.

Referee Mark Heywood didn’t see the incident, but on being informed of the foul by his assistant, quickly reached for his red.

Hylton said: “It’s obvious he’s thrown the elbow and you can’t throw elbows, you get sent off for that and rightly.

“Sometimes they don’t want to make those big decisions, for me it was an obvious one. The ball’s in the air and I thought it was clear for everyone to see.

“He threw an elbow, caught me, lucky I had my mask on, but rightly he got sent off.

“He’s my old team-mate, I’d still shake his hand and give him a cuddle now if I saw him, it’s football and that’s the way it is.

“You want to do everything you can to try and win the game, I don’t really know why he threw an elbow, but he’s a big, nasty centre half and that’s what big, nasty centre halves do.

“He got sent off today and unlucky we couldn’t capitalise on that.”

It wasn’t just Raynes who had to leave the field either, with the Cumbrians’ goalkeeper coach Simon Tracey sent to the stands too for an incident on the touchline as Hylton was waiting to return to the fray.

On what happened, the striker continued: “They weren’t happy with the sending off, I can’t quite understand why, it was an obvious elbow.

“Then I think it was their goalie coach, or someone on the bench, he just ran on and barged me.

“I don’t really know, it was quite embarrassing, a grown man doing that. He got sent off as well, but I didn’t do anything.”

The visitors could count themselves lucky not to be reduced to 10 men minutes earlier, when Shaun Brisley, booked seconds earlier for a nasty foul on Hylton, then clipped the forward as he looked to break away again.

When asked for his view on both incidents, Luton chief Nathan Jones said: “The thing is with that is (first booking), it’s an intentional foul.

“He’s gone to take him out. Now that can injure people, but then he should have got booked (again), so the accumulation of both, should have been a red card.

“Then the boy Raynes is a competitive player, very competitive player, I watch him and he likes that, he likes that combative edge.

“But what he’s done is he’s done him off the ball and it’s a bit cowardly if I’m honest.

“That’s sometimes what Danny invites as he’s a whole-hearted player and it was a good battle between them.

“But we stood up to that physical test and showed we don’t get bullied by anyone as it shows we’ve got a strong group.”

Cumbrians boss Keith Curle was clearly less than impressed by the decisions of the officials as when questioned, simply answered: “Yeah,” before adding: “To summarise, I think the fourth official had an excellent game today.”

After being pushed on Tracey being dismissed too, Curle added: “I think he was telling the fourth official what a good job he was doing as well.”