CRAIG Levein tonight admitted he was totally confused about the controversial opening goal that Rangers scored during his St Johnstone side’s Premier Sports Cup defeat at Hampden.
Referee Matthew MacDermid appeared to indicate that he was awarding a free-kick to the Perth club for a foul by Cyriel Dessers on Jack Sanders during the build-up to the second half opener.
And the McDiarmid Park outfit’s players were incensed when the match official allowed the strike to stand following a lengthy VAR check because they believed they had heard him blow his whistle.
Levein, whose team lost 2-0 and missed out on a place in the quarter-finals of the competition they won back in 2021, confessed that he was completely bewildered by what had happened after the final whistle.
However, he revealed that his players were convinced that they heard MacDermid blow his whistle for an infringement before Dessers had fired beyond his goalkeeper Joshua Rae.
“What the f**k happened there?” he said. “Anybody know? Anybody help me with it? I didn’t speak to the referee, what's the point? I've been there a hundred times and I end up getting fined and then doubling my fine and then doubling it again.
“Some of them said he blew the whistle. I'm not being funny, but how could you hear? I don't know. I even tried to listen back to it on the footage and all the rest of it. I can't tell.
“I thought it was a foul for us. I thought that Jack had been tripped by Dessers and that's why Jack was on the ground. And that's why Dessers still had the ball. So I thought there's no danger here. They're going to rule this out because Jack's been fouled. That was what I thought.
“Everybody stopped because of one or two things. Either they've stopped because they heard the whistle or they've seen the referee giving us a free kick. And then of course what makes it worse because the players are then really frustrated and say stuff to the referee they end up getting booked.
“I think the referee's made a mistake. That's what I think. And I'd love him to come out afterwards and just say, look I've got that one wrong. I'm going to get in trouble if I keep going. I find it very difficult to understand what happened and the logic behind that.”
Levein added: “I was really pleased with the performance today. But I didn't even get a chance to speak to the players after the game because I was on inquest for about 20 minutes about what the hell had happened with the first Rangers goal.
“I was pleased with a lot of the things that they did in the game. I think it's a step up even from last week against Kilmarnock. I thought we worked really, really hard, tried to pressurise Rangers all over the pitch, particularly in the back line.
“Unfortunately, we missed some good chances. But I'd like to think that we can take some confidence, a lot of confidence from this performance today because I didn't feel we were ever out of the match.
“Maybe the last five minutes when we had we just lost. I put as many strikers on the field as I could and hoped for the best. But there were a lot of really good things and we can have a look at those when we get back to work in the next few days.
“There's a lot of things about the game today that I actually really like. But just the manner in which we lost was, what's the word, puzzling probably. Puzzling would be a nice word.”
