LEVI Sutton claims City are the fall guys in the decision to replay their FA Cup replay at Exeter.

The Bantams make their third trip to St James Park tonight – and second this month – after the Grecians were found guilty of fielding one too many subs on their way to a 3-0 win last time.

But rather than kicking them out – as happened to Bundesliga side Wolfsburg when they made the same blunder against Preussen Munster in the first round of the German cup earlier this season - the FA opted to give Exeter another crack at staging the replay.

Not surprisingly, that did not go down well in the City camp.

Sutton said: “Is it fair? Absolutely not. I don’t understand how a decision’s been made where we’ve been punished.

“We’ve been hard done by in the game and the ruling is we have to go down there again.

“It obviously costs the club money and the time travelling. It doesn’t make sense to me.

“There was a game in Germany where the same thing took place and the other team automatically got put through – which we all thought was going to happen. We’re the victims of this.”

Sutton had just been subbed when Exeter made the glut of changes for the start of extra-time – including a sixth one in Josh Key which broke the limited permitted in FA Cup ties this season.

The midfielder added: “I came off in the 85th minute and watching on and thinking, ‘blimey, they look fit.’ They looked like they were running all over us.

“But it then comes to light the next day that they’d brought on a sixth sub.

“It changed the game. From 0-0 at full-time, they win 3-0 and it’s the players they bring on who score the goals.

“I only found out the next day when I saw it on the T&A tweet and a few of the lads put it in the (WhatsApp) group chat as well.

“At the time, I hadn’t realised they had done it, but I knew there was some confusion because I was obviously sat on the sub bench.

“I think the fourth official knew he’d had a stinker. But it was too late at the time to do anything.

“We were annoyed when it first came about. But we know where we’ve got to go now and everyone wants to win this game.”

The two sides have so far been deadlocked over 270 minutes of football and Sutton is predicting another tight encounter when they square up once more.

“We’re probably sick of the sight of each other,” he said. “But we’ve got to go down there and compete like we would every other time we played them and try to get through to the next round.

“I thought we were the better side in the home game but didn’t take our chances and got stung by the late equaliser.

“Even in the away one, I’d probably say we were better in the 90 minutes and then obviously they bring on the six subs and change the game.

“We could have done without this, to be honest. But it’s done now and we’ve got to go back and try to get through to the next round.”

And Sutton is banking on Callum Cooke to help those long hours on the coach up and down the motorway fly by – with his team-mate’s flight simulator game.

He laughed: “Callum loves it and he’s got a good set-up with this thing he calls a ‘yoke’ (which is like a throttle) to attach to his laptop.

“Gilly (Alex Gilliead) and I are going to sit with him and he’s going to fly the plane for us! He’s saying that if we were on a real one and the pilot got ill, he thinks he could land it.

“He says he’s a man of many skills so we’ll see if he can. But we said that he should be coming in his British Airways uniform!”