West Ham United manager Sam Allardyce has called on the Football Association to "ease the load" on referees in order to cut down the number of mistakes.

The 58-year-old believes that officials are being overworked, especially over the busy festive period, which is leading to fatigue.

Allardyce was responding to a question regarding Carlton Cole's red card against Everton, which was rescinded yesterday.

"This is a difficult period for referees," Allardyce told reporters. "Why do they always seem to make more wrong decisions now?

"It's probably because they are overworked and they are fatigued and the system has to be looked at. Referees are travelling all over the country and out in Europe and have been since the start of the season.

"There's not enough of them. They try their very best to get things consistently right, but it happens every year around this time of year. They need to ease the load on the referees we have. The game needs to move on and look at recruiting better refs from all avenues."

Darron Gibson, who also saw red for a similar challenge in last Saturday's meeting at Upton Park, was also successful in his appeal.