“Everybody in the stadium would have been booked if the referee could have got around to it, It’s another reminder of where we are with refereeing”- Furious Leicester City manager Steve Cooper slams referee David Coote after controversial officiating decisions influenced Foxes loss to Aston Villa

Cooper said that meeting with referees this summer suggested the threshold for fouls would be raised, allowing for a more physical match. But City’s 2-1 loss to Villa was stop-start throughout, with 34 free-kicks awarded by referee David Coote and nine yellow cards shown to players.

City assistant manager Alan Tate was booked at half-time and so was another member of the club’s staff, potentially Cooper, in the second half. One frustrating decision was the free-kick awarded against Oliver Skipp that led to the Villa opener, but otherwise, Cooper’s irritation was with the refereeing as a whole.

“I think everybody in the stadium would have been booked if the referee could have got around to it,” Cooper said in his post-match press conference. “I’ve just accepted that the refereeing is where it is. I’ve said things before and ended up being fined. I’m not going to do that.

“I do know that, because of where refereeing is, you just keep your fingers crossed every week that it doesn’t go against you on gameday. I realised that last season when I was away from the game, when I’m looking at them more neutrally and you see it clearly that it’s behind the curve in the Premier League.

“It’s the best league in the world, without any shadow of a doubt, but the refereeing, for a number of years, has been trying to catch up with that. You accept this is how it is, it’s out of your control but you keep your fingers crossed.

“You can talk about isolated decisions, but I won’t. What I will talk about is the managers meeting that we had in pre-season. The club visits you have from referees and the refereeing association, the key message to us was that the threshold for tackles and duels, in this beautiful English game that we love, was going to be raised. I can remember it clearly.

“And then we get that. It’s another reminder that we are where we are with refereeing. Let’s just focus on the players. Let’s be disappointed with the result. I’ll let other people sort that out and hopefully they will.”

City fans were also frustrated by a number of other decisions in the game. They had a second-half goal for Jamie Vardy ruled out when Coote got in the way of a pass in the build-up. There were also two penalty shouts on Vardy, the first for a tackle by Youri Tielemans in which he got the ball but also took the man, and the second at the death, which was awarded before rightly being overturned for offside.

Those moments came in a second period in which City more than held their own. They had trailed 2-0 after an hour, but fought back, Facundo Buonanotte scoring his maiden goal for the club to give them a lifeline. But they could not turn their pressure into chances late on.