After his team was eliminated from the Scottish Cup with nine men, irate Hearts manager Neil Critchley accused referee John Beaton of treating him disrespectfully. The Jambos manager was incensed at the decision to send defender Michael Steinwender off the pitch at Hampden as they lost 2-1 to Aberdeen in extra time.
The Austrian was sent packing after just 44 minutes with the semi-final poised at 1-1. Hearts were then reduced to nine when Cammy Devlin was sent off late on.
Moments later, Oday Dabbagh struck the Dons’ winner to book Jimmy Thelin team’s place in the final on May 24.
Critchley couldn’t hide his frustration afterwards and felt Beaton got BOTH red card decisions wrong.
His assistant Mike Garrity was also ordered off for protesting and the Hearts boss says if he did his job as badly as Beaton, he’d soon be unemployed.
Critchley said: “I’ve never seen a referee get a red card out quicker in my entire life.
“The first one was a long way from goal and we had recovering defenders. But he couldn’t wait to send him off.
“I tried to speak to the referee. When you try to say things in a respectful way, you hope that you get respect back.
“I like to think I give everyone respect with the way I conduct myself and I expect that in return.
“But I don’t think I got that today. There were a few questionable decisions throughout the game.
There was Cammy Devlin’s first booking, then the second one.
“He’s in a motion and going to clear the ball before the other lad (Dante Polvara) jumps in front of him.
“Yeah, it’s a foul. But to book him. I mean, come on. Wow. It was absolutely incredible.
“There isn’t much tolerance in this world nowadays with people’s position and their job.
Michael Steinwender is shown a straight red card from referee John Beaton
“So I like to try and show an understanding of a difficult job that they’ve got.
“However today, if I had performed like the referee performed then I wouldn’t be sitting here for very long.
“I’m just gutted for the players and the supporters who were magnificent.
“The players gave a proper Hearts performance and I’m really proud of how the team played.
“With 10 men we were brilliant, putting our bodies on the line. The least we deserved was to take it to penalties.
“Aberdeen might still have won. But at least we would have had that opportunity that our performance deserved.”
It completed a disastrous week for Hearts and Critchley after they failed to make the Premiership’s top six last Saturday.
Their campaign is now effectively over, with their only aim avoiding the dreaded relegation play-off spot.
But Critchley stood up for his record since taking the job on and says he isn’t feeling under pressure. He said: “It’s not the seasons we want, of course not.
“Hearts should be going to the latter stages of cup competitions and competing at the top end of the league. Unfortunately we’re not doing that.
“But we’ve now got to build some positivity in the five remaining games to take into the summer.
“If you’re asking me about my position, when you look at when I took over, we had two points after 11 games.
“We’ve gathered a lot of points since. If you do a points-per-game in my tenure we’d be top six comfortably. And we’ve got to a semi-final, taking it right to the wire today with ten men for a long period. We could be in a cup final. That’s the fine margins.
“I think there are more than enough positive signs and we have a plan and strategy on how we want to move forward. You can’t deviate after one performance or result. So we have to keep going.”
