Mikel Arteta sees red against West Brom

Everton manager David Moyes was unhappy with the decision not to award his team a free-kick against West Brom moments before Mikel Arteta's sending off.

The midfielder was dismissed for a second-half stamp on Gonzalo Jara during the 4-1 home defeat.

Moyes argued the incident would not have occurred had Jara been penalised for a collision with Leighton Baines.

"It was a free-kick on the edge of the box, which should have been dealt with. The referee is close enough," he said.

Everton endured a dismal afternoon and are now only two points away from the relegation zone after the defeat.

West Brom, who had not won at Goodison Park in their previous 11 attempts, were comfortable victors thanks to goals from Paul Scharner, Chris Brunt, Somen Tchoyi and Youssouf Mulumbu.

Arteta was sent off for twice stamping on defender Jara after he was brought down rather recklessly by the Chilean, but Moyes refused to discuss the incident.

"I'm not going to talk about the sending-off, I'll only talk about what happened prior to it," added the Everton boss, whose team's solitary goal came from Tim Cahill.

"It was an elbow in his face, on Leighton Baines. The player [Jara] led with his elbow. As far as I am concerned that is the decision we should be talking about."

Moyes admitted his team started poorly and did not offer excuses as his team's winless run stretched to five games.

"You can play badly and maybe get away with it but we didn't get away with it because we didn't pick up well enough," said the Scot.

"We were terrible in the first half. We got the goal and I told them [at half-time] they had 10 minutes to get another goal back and then I'd make changes. I did that.

606: DEBATE We were unlucky. If Arteta would have used his nous and Beckford had not been so terrible we would have won Donkey

"The players had a go and in truth we were maybe close to winning it at one point, but in the end we've ended up losing quite heavily."

West Brom manager Roberto di Matteo praised his team's lethal finishing, saying: "There were some excellent goals. We were very clinical, which has been missing in the last few weeks from our game.

"I thought we played some fantastic football, we didn't show any fear. We showed a lot of courage to come here and play the football we did.

"We rode our luck a bit at 2-1 and our keeper made some great saves to keep us in the game. But the quality of our play and the quality of goals gave us our advantage."

The only downside for the Baggies was the late sending-off of Mulumbu for two bookable offences. The defender received his first yellow for over-celebrating his goal and moments later was booked for a challenge on Steven Pienaar.

"He needs to learn a bit, but I think the second yellow card was a bit harsh. I don't think he touched the opponent and I think he got the ball as well," said Di Matteo.

"If we have yellow cards for those challenges we should have 20 in every game."

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