St Johnstone manager Craig Levein has hit out at the “ridiculous” VAR intervention that turned his team’s clash with Dundee on its head.
But he also took aim at his players for letting the controversial 75th minute equaliser deflate them rather than fire them up.
Saints were 1-0 up through an early Matt Smith goal when referee David Munro was told to make the trip to his pitchside monitor to view a challenge by Liam Gordon on Amadou Bakayoko from a Dundee corner.
Levein revealed that neither he nor opposite number Tony Docherty had a clue what the check related to.
And the Perth boss believes VAR official, Don Robertson, came up with the latest in a long line of unnecessary interventions.
“It’s not VAR,” said Levein, whose team went down to a 90th minute Jordan McGhee winner after Luke McCowan’s spot-kick leveller.
“It’s people making the decisions.
“The decision-making for me was ridiculous.
“Look at every set-piece in a game and you could find something that could be called a foul.
“Firstly, Gordy’s arm is raised by David Keltjens. It’s raised Gordy’s arm and it’s on the shoulder.
“The referee is none the wiser but somebody decides it’s a good idea to intervene.
“That’s not a clear and obvious error.
“Doc’s asking me: ‘Is it a penalty for you or a penalty for us? I’ve said: ‘I’ve not got a clue’.
“That’s what happened.
“It’s very simple. It’s not VAR, it’s somebody sitting in a wee booth somewhere thinking: ‘You know, if I’m pretty bored I’ll maybe call the referee over for this one’.
“Honestly, I don’t get it.
“Nobody knows what’s going on.
“That’s the third one of those that has gone against us.
“Maybe Dundee haven’t had much luck recently but we certainly haven’t, that’s for sure.
“If we’re going to re-referee games after every corner and free-kick I’m sure you could find blocking, hands on shoulders, holding jerseys – loads of them.”
‘Abysmal’
Turning to his team’s post-equaliser display, Levein added: “What really, really annoyed me was our response to it was abysmal.
“We’ve let it affect us enormously and we’ve stopped doing the things that got us into the lead.
“There’s nothing I can do about the VAR thing but I can do something about that.
“I was more disappointed with my players after that equaliser than I was with the thing itself.
“First half we were great but in the second half they fought harder and worked harder than us.
“Then the equaliser was an incentive for Dundee to put their foot to the floor but we didn’t match them.
“I apologise to our supporters for our second half performance because it wasn’t good enough.”
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