Sheffield United defender Ben Osborn felt an early red card saw their gameplan collapse in Sunday's 5-0 home defeat to Brighton.
Holgate was sent off for a high challenge on Kaoru Mitoma on just 13 minutes.
Osborn said: "I thought we started the game okay to be fair, with 11 men. We had a game-plan we'd been working on all week. Obviously that goes out the window when we do go down to 10 and to put the nail in the coffin we conceded two goals straight away after that which aren't great, especially from a set-piece.
"At 2-0 we did okay and had a chance potentially to get back in the game but the goal got disallowed. We have come out second half with another game plan to keep it tight, look for set-pieces and see if we can make it a nervy finish. But when the third goal goes in that completely kills it."
