Sanchez - Buck up or bring in the video refs

This was not just a rant by a manager tortured by the loss of a point when a nation of armchair viewers could plainly see David Healy's equaliser two minutes into added time was over the goal-line.

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Off the mark: Mido celebrates after opening his Middlesbrough account

In fact, Sanchez is old-fashioned and prefers his games decided by the human factor. But if the officials keep getting it wrong, and assistant Ian Gosling was horribly awry in this instance, then the man in front of a TV screen can take over.

Fourth official Andy D'Urso was in charge of the farce, having taken over from injured referee Lee Mason in the eighth minute. If he had been allowed to consult the replacement fourth official, who would have seen on the monitor that keeper Mark Schwarzer and the ball were over the line, D'Urso could have given the goal.

Sanchez said: "If they don't get these decisions right then someone will decide they are only allowed to do the minor decisions with the important ones being done by someone with a video monitor. I'm not a great advocate of technology. I'd like referees to be the arbitrators of what is wrong and right. But these officials have no excuse and will probably be marked down for it. I told the referee a major error had been made and that he would be pilloried for it."

Yet Sanchez has even bigger problems to face after injuries to his captain Brian McBride and Hameur Bouazza. Striker McBride collapsed with a dislocated left kneecap and possible leg fracture with no other player near him when he put Fulham ahead in the 16th minute. He will be out for at least three months.

Wide man Bouazza, signed from Watford for £3.5million earlier this month, dislocated his right shoulder soon after, leaving Sanchez in need of at least one new forward. He could join the race for Southampton's Kenwyne Jones.

Sanchez added: "If I'd written a script on how many things can go from right to wrong in the course of a game it would have been that one.

"Losing Brian for three months is a big blow. And Bouazza had been running the right back ragged until control and flowing up to those incidents.

"Then the linesman didn't see our goal when 20,000 other people did. It was only about a foot over the line."

But one man's misery was another's joy. Step forward Middlesbrough boss Gareth Southgate, who defied logic to throw in Mido, his new £6m signing from Tottenham, when the Egypt striker was still caked with mothballs. He was gifted a debut goal, Boro's equaliser, by calamity keeper Tony Warner — who had dollied a goal for Bolton in midweek, too.

Southgate revealed that his backroom staff thought he was unhinged for even thinking of playing the big man. "He's had no pre-season," said the former England defender. "He's hardly trained for the last couple of weeks and has not had a game for five months. 'I just felt he would give us that presence he's brought into the club since he's been here."

Mido, 24, said: "I haven't played a game since April against Chelsea and you don't know how difficult it is to play after four or five months. Sometimes you need to be lucky with your goals. Look at any top scorer and they get at least five or six lucky goals a season. That was one lucky goal."

Southgate can also take credit for what turned out to be the 88th-minute winner, bringing on Jeremie Aliadiere to bamboozle the Fulham defence with a run before setting up Lee Cattermole for his cool strike inside the far-left post.

Then came the cruellest of finishes and the latest example of rigid rules overshadowing common sense. Fulham will hope that the point they should have won is not of the greatest importance by the end of the season.