The Football Association is to investigate Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers' comments following his criticism of referee Lee Mason.
Rodgers said the officials' performance in Liverpool's 2-1 Boxing Day defeat by Manchester City was "horrendous" and questioned the decision to allocate the game to the Bolton referee.
"I certainly wasn't questioning the integrity of referees," he said. "It was more than logical [to question] having a referee from that part of the world [given] a game in Manchester."
After the match at Etihad Stadium, Rodgers was angry that Raheem Sterling had a goal wrongly ruled out for offside and felt Luis Suarez was denied a late penalty.
Rodgers said: "Hopefully we won't have a Greater Manchester referee with Liverpool-Manchester games in future.
"We had nothing that went our way at all.
Rodgers was particularly infuriated by the decision against Sterling, who put the ball in the net after being incorrectly flagged offside when the game was still goalless.
He also claimed Suarez had his shirt pulled by Manchester City defender Joleon Lescott inside the home penalty area in the late stages.
"I never go on about officials but I thought they were horrendous," he said.
The FA must now decide whether Rodgers is in breach of rule E3 (1), which deals with comments made about a match official which could be argued imply bias, attack the officials' integrity or are personally offensive in nature.
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