OWEN Coyle has called for referees to have the courage of their convictions, after Martin Paterson had an early goal at Charlton Athletic controversially chalked off.

Derbyshire official Rob Shoebridge over-ruled his assistant’s offside flag after spotting that a through ball for Paterson had come off Addicks right back Yassin Moutaouakil.

But after Paterson went on to round two defenders and slot the ball past goalkeeper Nicky Weaver, the referee consulted his linesman on the far side and back-tracked on his earlier to decision, denying the striker the chance to put the Clarets into an early lead.

Steven Thompson scored his first for Burnley five minutes later, only for it to be cancelled out by Charlton substitute Svetoslav Todorov with 14 minutes to go, leaving Coyle wondering what might have been had Paterson's opener been allowed to stand.

"For me it's very simple. When the ball was played through Martin Paterson looked to be in an offside position in the first phase of play," he said.

"But as we all know, the linesman doesn't raise his flag until the ball reaches that player.

"That never happened, the Charlton player then knocked it off, so in effect played Martin Paterson onside.

"The referee recognised that and over-ruled his linesman and gave the command to play on with the advantage.

"Even then Martin Paterson's got a lot of work to do but beats two or three men and it's a great finish.

"He scores a good goal, everyone's away celebrating and then back to the halfway line, at which point the referee decides to speak to his linesman.

"About what? Because he's seen what we'd all seen, that a Charlton player had played Martin Paterson in, in the second phase of play.

"I really don't want to be talking about officials because I think it was a great game of football, but that's what happened.

"You can never say, because we might never have scored the goal that we did, but that would have set us up.

"I think it was a mistake. I hope (the referee) would recognise that and would hold his hands up.

"It's important that we do have dialogue and we recognise that refereeing is the hardest job in the world, but to be fair to him he looked as though he recognised what the situation was, and allowed the advantage.

"It just seemed a bit bizarre to pull it back then and rule it out.

"It just raises the issue that if you see something you're convinced by then you stand true to it."

But that wasn't the sum total of Coyle's frustrations at referee Shoebridge's display.

"There were a couple of things within the game," he said.

"Joey Gudjonsson goes through ready to score at the edge of the box and he's pulled down - not that you want people sent off or cards issued, but the rules are the rules.

"I think I've seen weeks with my players when that happens and it's a red card or a yellow card or whatever.

"Wade Elliott went through, one-on-one in the box. I think the left-back got booked for it but I thought it was the centre half that fouled him, whether it was in the box or it wasn't."