Furious Oxford boss Karl Robinson said the club would appeal against striker Matty Taylor’s 57th-minute red card in the 2-1 home defeat by Peterborough.

Taylor appeared to put his hand out towards Peterborough’s Ronnie Edwards as he was pushed to the ground.

But Robinson said it was not worthy of a straight red card and he blasted referee Andy Woolmer’s performance as “atrocious” and “up there with some of the worst I’ve ever seen”.

First-half goals from Jack Taylor and Kwame Poku put Posh two up before Billy Bodin pulled one back for the U’s seven minutes into the second half.

But Matty Taylor’s 57th-minute dismissal massively dented Oxford’s hopes of getting a second goal to snatch a point.

Robinson said: “My players gave everything to the shirt.

“For the first goal we didn’t track a runner into the box, and that was obviously our fault.

“I thought we started brightly, it was just two stupid breakaway goals which we have to accept.

“But the inconsistency of the referee was atrocious.

“The refereeing performance, and he’s a Championship referee too, was up there with some of the worst I have ever seen.

“We’ll probably get fined for the melee that developed, and get fined for what we say.

“But we are definitely going to appeal the red card. He put his hand out against him in the midriff area, not high.

“All we can control is how hard we work and we did work incredibly hard. They were soldiers and warriors out there and we’ll keep on fighting for the shirt.

“The players were distraught in the changing room about losing that game, and Matty was distraught at his red card.

“I know the pressure’s always on the manager when results go against you but I thought we gave everything.”

Oxford’s defeat leaves them just one place above the drop zone in League One with a difficult trip to Portsmouth on Tuesday night.

In contrast, Peterborough are fourth in the table and they achieved this win despite a long injury list.

Peterborough boss Grant McCann said: “I’m really, really pleased with the whole day because I think we have shown two sides to our game today.

“We have shown that fight and determination which, from the outside looking in some people may have been questioning whether we have got it away from home because we have been in the lead and teams have come back and beaten us.

“We have come to a really good Oxford team and one which, in my opinion, is on the up and in the first half we were excellent with our two goals.

“And in the second half we had to dig in and we did that.

“It was really nice to get an early goal – and a well-worked goal too. I was really pleased with Ephron Mason-Clark, he was excellent today.

“Oxford’s goal was a poor one for us to concede because we dropped too deep and their player had a free header.

“With the sending off I don’t know, I’ll have to see it back. It just seemed to be a coming together, I don’t know what happened after.

“But after that we had to dig in, and mentally we were spot on.”