Crystal Palace are braced to be without their captain, Mile Jedinak, until mid-April after the Football Association charged the Australia international retrospectively with violent conduct.

Jedinak appeared to fling an elbow at the West Ham United striker Diafra Sakho, making contact with the forward’s face, late in Palace’s 3-1 victory at the Boleyn ground on Saturday. The incident was missed by the referee, Mike Dean,and therefore did not feature in his report, allowing the governing body to re-examine video footage and impose the charge.

The incident will be referred to a panel of three former elite referees to determine if the elbow would have merited a red card had it been spotted at the time, an offence which would have seen the concession of a penalty and left the visitors reduced to nine men given Glenn Murray had already been dismissed having accrued two yellow cards.

Palace and their midfielder had been granted until 6pm on Tuesday, under two hours before the kick-off of their game at Southampton, to decide whether to respond. Yet, despite the manager Alan Pardew having expressed his doubts that any charge would be forthcoming at his pre-match press conference earlier on Monday, they have decided not to appeal against the charge.

Jedinak was sent off for two bookable offences against Sunderland this season and would therefore incur a four-match ban for what would effectively constitute his second dismissal of the season. Any suspension would be confirmed prior to kick-off at St Mary’s – the panel’s decision has to be unanimous – he would miss the games against Southampton, Queens Park Rangers, Stoke City and Manchester City, and would not be available again until Palace’s trip to Sunderland on 11 April.

Pardew had pointed to an incident involving the West Bromwich Albion defender Craig Dawson with Palace’s goalkeeper, Julian Speroni, which went unpunished this season as evidence of inconsistency, though that incident was spotted by the referee, Mark Clattenburg, at the time. “I’ve seen worse incidents where nothing has happened,” said Pardew. “We have an incident from Dawson on Speroni which is far worse than this incident and nothing was done. So where are the guidelines? What are we doing?

“In retrospect, it’s very difficult. The FA have a tough job, by the way. We had the incidents with [Nemanja] Matic and, this week, with [Stephen] Ireland. Where do you draw the line? Does the referee ref it? But retrospective on sendings off, diving … all this is on the agenda. We need some clear guidelines.”