Soccer News: Peter Crouch has courted fresh controversy after his dismissal at Chelsea by accusing Mikel John Obi of feigning injury and insisting the midfielder's theatrical reaction to a two-footed lunge was something an Englishman would not have done.

The Liverpool striker made his remarks after his club's League Cup quarter-final defeat at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday, during which he collected the fourth red card of his career for a reckless challenge on the Nigeria international shortly after Frank Lampard had put Chelsea ahead.

Although he admitted he had "no excuses" for the dangerous leap on Mikel, Crouch believes the Chelsea midfielder conned the referee, Martin Atkinson, by exaggerating the severity of its impact. And the 26-year-old England international revived the allegation that simulation is a ploy confined to foreign footballers when he claimed an English player would not have responded so dramatically.

"What I'm thinking is if you go in on Frank Lampard or John Terry, would they roll around like Mikel did? I don't think they would have done," said Crouch, the third player dismissed for a two-footed challenge in the League Cup this week, following Arsenal's Denilson and Tottenham Hotspur's Didier Zokora. "Would someone like Carra [Jamie Carragher] have gone down like that? I think it's safe to say that he wouldn't.

"Foreign players have brought a lot to our game but that's something you don't want to see. I didn't catch him but he's gone down like he's been shot.

"It's frustrating because I thought we played okay as a team. It was always going to be difficult away from home against Chelsea. We always thought that we were in the game and could have nicked it but after the sending-off it was always going to be difficult."

Crouch's uncharacteristic performance was not confined to his foul on the Nigerian, a challenge that brought an instant three-match ban for serious foul play and suspends him from Liverpool's festive programme against Portsmouth, Derby County and Manchester City. His reluctance to leave the pitch after being shown the red card may invite further censure from the English FA should Atkinson mention it in his official report, and television showed Crouch reacting furiously to taunts from Chelsea supporters as he headed down the tunnel.

The striker, however, echoed his manager Rafael Benitez's assertion that the incident would never have exploded had Mikel been punished for two fouls before Crouch's rush of blood. "Mikel came in with his studs up and that was in the back of my mind. Then I thought there was another foul in there and I obviously lost my head. There are no excuses for the tackle I made but if the referee had pulled the foul up when he should have done it wouldn't have happened.

"A lot was going their way and I think frustration got the better of me. You give and take with referees and sometimes the decisions go for you and sometimes they don't, so you can't always blame them."

Liverpool's owners, George Gillett and Tom Hicks, are understood to have postponed until 2009 their plans to borrow all of the €900 million required to fund a new stadium and refinance their purchase of the club.

The Americans are currently trying to secure €49 million from the Royal Bank of Scotland and the US bank Wachovia to refinance the loans acquired to purchase Liverpool in February, to fund the first €84 million worth of work on the stadium and cover the credit used to pay the first instalments on signings such as Fernando Torres. Plans to borrow the final €420-million costs of the stadium now, however, have been shelved because of the global credit crunch and the club's existing debt.

That decision has its benefits for Liverpool because the club will be saddled with the majority of the debt and annual interest repayments will rise to about €42 million once the loans are in place. Gillett and Hicks also believe it will be easier to secure loans and attract sponsors for naming rights once work on the stadium is under way, but doubts remain about their ability to secure the €420-million loan in 2009 and complete the revised project two years later.

• Guardian Service