ALAN SMITH has accused Preston North End players of over-reacting after his innocuous brush with Chris Brown.
The Toon skipper had to be restrained by Marlon Harewood during the 1-0 win with Preston after enduring some vicious verbal treatment from North End captain Callum Davidson.
A half-time scuffle in the tunnel also required the attention of stewards after Harewood’s 50-50 challenge resulted in Youl Mawene being hospitalised after suffering medial ligament damage just on the stroke of half-time.
However, United battled through to grab three points thanks to Kevin Nolan’s winner.
Reflecting on the challenge with Brown, Smith, who was booked in the first half, said today: “I got booked for a header I thought I won.
“The ref said I lent with my arm, but anybody who has played knows that to jump, you have to lead with your arm to win a header.
“The second one that caught Chris Brown, I was up before him and didn’t see him.
“That was it – he didn’t have much to say about it, to be honest, but I think some of their players were trying to get me sent off.
“You get used to that now.”
And Smith feels teams will revert to both fair means and foul in order to beat the Mags.
He said: “Wherever we go, we know every teams wants to beat us whichever way they can.”
Captain Smith, though, was quick to praise his own team-mates. He said: “A few of us were struggling before the game, and it was just one of those results we had to grind out.
“We looked comfortable. We never really looked like we were struggling. I can’t remember Harps having a really difficult save to make.
“It was his ninth clean sheet of the season, and we’ve got people in this team who can nick us a goal.
“When we got it down and played our football, we looked the most dangerous, and it was a great performance away from home at a difficult place.
“We know we’re going to come strong in the second half. We always feel we have another gear to go to.
“We kept the ball well at times although it wasn’t our best performance. There were times we could have done better.
“But you can’t perform week-in, week-out like we did against Peterborough.
“It’s a good three points, but we’ve got to concentrate on Swansea.”
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