Man Utd lost 2-1 to Leeds in the Premier League on Monday, but the game was influenced by a controversial red card.

Bruno Fernandes said he would get in “very big trouble” if he shared his opinion on the referee in Manchester United’s defeat to Leeds. Lisandro Martinez was shown a straight red card against Leeds on Monday night.

Martinez briefly pulled on Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s hair during an aerial duel. Referee Paul Tierney was advised to check the monitor by the VAR, and the defender was shown a red card for violent conduct.

The Premier League’s official match centre wrote on social media: “After VAR review, the referee issued a red card to Martínez for violent conduct. Referee announcement: ‘After review, Manchester United 6 is guilty of pulling his hair – violent conduct. Final decision is red card’.”

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During his post-match press conference, Michael Carrick described the decision to send Martinez off as “absolutely shocking” and confirmed the club will consider lodging an appeal.

Fernandes refrained from giving his opinion during an interview with Sky Sports for fear of receiving attention from the FA. “I’m not talking about the referee,” he said of the red card incident.

“If I talk about the referee, I’m going to get in very big trouble because the rules are applied differently for everyone. You can see it also in the yellow cards. It’s better that I don’t say anything.”

Fernandes did share his thoughts on United’s performance, though. “We gave the game away in the first half. We were not up to the game straight away with our intensity. We knew they wanted to press as 1 vs 1, we had to be better on the first ball but even better on the second ball,” he said.

“We weren’t great, we gave too much space away. We ended up going 2-0 down, we had time in the second half to turn it around but it was not possible.

“It doesn’t change anything that we want to achieve. We know that our aim is to stay in the top four. It’s in our hands, we have to win our games, if we do that we’ll be in the position we want to be in at the end of the season.”

United headed into the Leeds clash after a 24-day break between games. “It is what it is,” Fernandes said of the break. “We are out of the FA Cup so we have to blame ourselves to be out of the game for so long. We had to prepare ourselves in the best way. We did but it wasn’t enough to win the game.”

Martinez is facing the prospect of a three-match ban, meaning he could miss Premier League games against Chelsea, Brentford and Liverpool.

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