By Mark Heys
November 29 2005

Sam Allardyce beleives that Bolton's game at Fulham should not have taken place as it emerged that the officials where experimenting with communications equiptment for the first time. The listening equiptment is said to make life easier for officials as they interact with each other during the game but Allardyce is yet to be convinced after seeing seeing seven of his players booked in an unmalicious contest which ended up 2-1 to the Cottagers.

Worse still for the Bolton manager is that he only found out that referee Graham Poll was using the technology after the Wanderers had slumped to their fourth defeat of the season.

Referee's chairman Keith Hackett issued an apology to Allardyce in this morning's media after failing to make him aware of what was going to be taking place.

"I owe a little bit of an apology to Sam in fairness because even I was caught a little bit on the hop over the weekend.

"We knew we had plans to bring the system in immediately. We were going to use it at Manchester United versus Chelsea but in fact we had to cancel that.

"I would like to have advised Sam a week in advance but he should have no fear because what is said between player and referee is still between player and referee.

"It's not communicated or saved on a disk to be used as further evidence, if you like, which I suppose might be his fear."