Motherwell manager Stephen Robinson mystified as to why officials chopped off Declan Gallagher ‘goal’

Stephen Robinson watches his team losing their first match in four against Ross County (Pic by Ian McFadyen)

Gallagher headed home a first half Jake Carroll throw-in but referee Alan Muir controversially chopped off the strike for Gallagher’s alleged infringement on County defender Keith Watson.

“Someone needs to explain to me why Declan Gallagher’s goal’s been disallowed because there’s no foul whatsoever,” Robinson said.

“We can’t affect what referees give us and what they don’t give us.

“We can affect how we defend in the last 15 minutes.

“Our defending was poor.”

Motherwell had led midway through the second half courtesy of Allan Campbell’s fine low strike after a crisp passing move, but conceded an equaliser to Brian Graham before losing defender Jake Carroll to a second booking.

County – second best for much of the match – won it late on with Ross Stewart’s back post header.

Robbo added: “For the first goal we left the middle of the pitch wide open.

“And for the second goal we take a quick throw-in with 10 men with three minutes to go.

“It’s a naive decision from a young, young team.

“And I think it probably shows where we are in terms of experience. How to manage a game with 10 men in the last few minutes.

“It’s very difficult to get that information onto them when it’s over on the far side of the pitch.

“But that’s where the goal comes from. Then we don’t contain Foster on the halfway line. We dive in and we get punished for it.

“So we’ll live and we’ll learn from it.”

On Carroll’s sending off for a second booking following an aerial clash with a County player, Robinson added: “It was possibly naive when you’re on a booking.

“I don’t think Jake Carroll actually sees him.

“I think he just turns into him and the fourth official agreed with me.

“But perhaps if you’re on a booking you need to contain yourself a little bit more.

“We’ve only ourselves to blame. We have to look at ourselves for the last 15 minutes of the game and the management of that. And we didn’t manage it well enough.”

Robbo said that – with Motherwell down to 10 men with four minutes remaining and the score at 1-1 – his side would have taken a point.

He added: “It would probably been classed as a decent point but we should have been out of sight.

“We should have won the game. We had enough chances to kill them off and we didn’t.

“So we go back to the drawing board and go again for next week.”

The game Robbo refers to is at the Scottish Premiership’s bottom club St Johnstone this Saturday, kick-off 3pm.