Manchester City coach David Platt admitted that Mario Balotelli's alleged stamp on Scott Parker 'looks poor' in slow motion.
The Italian appeared to stamp on the Spurs midfielder in City's dramatic 3-2 English Premier League win on Sunday.
Referee Howard Webb took no action at the time but the Football Association soon stepped in, charging the striker with violent conduct.
If he is found guilty he would be banned for four matches and Platt believes an appeal would be futile given City's recent and unsuccessful appeal against Vincent Kompany's red card in a 3-2 defeat to rivals Manchester United in the FA Cup.
"I didn't see the incident (live), I didn't see what happened," Platt said.
"I'm not too sure he's caught Parker, but it looks poor when you slow it down. We don't know (if we are going to appeal)."
"I would think that the majority of people in this room would look at the Kompany situation and say he didn't deserve a four game ban, it didn't deserve the red card. So it shows the futility of an appeal sometimes."
Platt's side will travel to Liverpool on Wednesday for the Carling Cup semi-final second-leg, trailing 1-0 on aggregate after Steven Gerrard's strike at Etihad Stadium.
The City coach is well-aware of the threat that Kenny Dalglish's side can pose and said his side will not hold back in their bid for victory.
"We understand the difficulty of the tie," he said.
"We understand the difficulty of going to Anfield and getting any kind of result. The size of the game being a semi-final, there's no second bite of the cherry."
"We have to go there to look to win the game. We get nothing for a draw. We feel confident enough that we can turn the tie around. We're not going there like lambs to the slaughter."
"We're not going there thinking to ourselves that we're already out. We believe we have enough within the squad to able to go there and turn the tie around, but it's going to be tough."