Derek McInnes was furious that referee Matthew MacDermid did not consult with VAR during a first-half incident involving Shaun Rooney and Kyle Vassell as his side claimed a point in Paisley.
In a game where VAR had a prominent role with Joe Wright sent off for violent conduct – his second dismissal of the season – with a penalty and a 90th minute goal chopped off, McInnes could not contain his ire at the failure of the whistler to intervene at what he felt was clear misconduct.
“Shun Rooney volleys Kyle Vassell on the deck,” said McIness. “If VAR isn’t going to get involved in that, when are they going to get involved? Kyle Vassell is between the ball and Shaun Rooney. If Shaun Rooney is trying to get to the ball and trying to show a bit of restrain to get there…but he has went full-blooded, volley into Kyle Vassell’s hip. The referee doesn’t even speak to him let alone deal with him. I am disappointed that is allowed on a football pitch. It shouldn’t be.
“I don’t want to talk about other people’s players but that was an outrageous part of refereeing.
“For the life of me, I don’t see why he’s not been asked to look at that. At least deal with the player. He’s the referee, he’s on the pitch, he must see that! He doesn’t even need VAR to tell him that but he should go and deal with it.
“Sometimes you’ve got to make difficult decisions. That was one that felt like he should’ve dealt with it, and he had to deal with it.
I was speaking to the fourth official about it, thinking ‘Something has to happen here,’ because there’s no place for that on a football pitch.
The Killie boss, meanwhile, was delighted with his team as they twice came from behind to take a point with a spirited second half showing.
Saints had a 90th minute ‘goal’ chopped off with Marcus Fraser guilty of a high boot in the build-up but a draw was a fair overall result.
“Second half we come out and I’ve got a decision to make,” said McInnes. “Normally when you’ve got a man sent off, a defender, you got like for like and take one of your attacking players off. I was rewarded for not doing that and I thought my team was magnificent in the second half. We controlled that game. Out of possession, we let their outside centre-backs have the ball, fine. We had to defend a couple of crosses and counter-attacks, that happens. But by and large, we looked like a proper outfit.
“The difference this time with us going down to 10 men, is that we’ve went down to 10 men off the back of a European game on a Thursday and it’s been our fitness and legs that have cost us with results. Today, we looked as strong as we’ve ever been. We were so competitive. I’m so proud to be their manager. We take our point and if we – sorry, Joe – keeps his discipline, then we get three points because we were hands down the better team.”
Saints boss Stephen Robinson was frustrated that his side did not take control of the game in the second period. He thought Saints had won it in the final minute of regulation time but conceded that overall there were too many flaws in the performance to deserve all three points.
“I’ve not seen anything close up so I might be wrong with that,” he said of the goal that was chopped off. “But if I was Derek I’d have been frustrated from where I was standing with it.
“Ultimately we didn’t do enough to win the game, you know, we’re in control, we’ve lots of possession.
“We’re just trying to force the game instead of moving it wide as you need to do against ten men, stretch the game as wide as you can then deliver balls into the box make them defend and we didn’t do that often enough. so you don’t deserve to win the game.
“We know clearly are very very strong at them, we’ve spoke about it for 10 days. And we just haven’t defended them well enough, it’s as simple as that, we haven’t got out of the box.”
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