Tony Docherty held talks with referee chief Willie Collum after a hotly disputed red card for Dundee midfielder Mo Sylla.
With the Dundee leading 1-0, the 30-year-old was brandished a second yellow card by referee Grant Irvine after competing for a high ball with Kilmarnock’s Matty Kennedy and appearing to accidentally catch him with his elbow.
Sylla didn’t look like he even knew where the winger was but the whistler still felt it was worthy of a second booking and therefore a sending off.
His team still managed to extend their lead but Killie finally made their numerical advantage tell with three goals in the closing stages to take the three points.
Docherty coy on chat with Collum
The former Aberdeen and Killie assistant reckons playing for around an hour with a man short was a massive factor in that late collapse and that it ultimately came from an incorrect decision.
He spoke with Collum but wouldn’t divulge the nature of the chat.
The Dark Blues boss said: “We had a conversation but I’d rather keep that conversation to myself but certainly nothing has changed, I’m of the opinion it was a wrong decision.
“I need to be clear as a manager, I’ll deal with my team and the shortcomings we showed. There are reasons for that.
“Sometimes you do overload exercises in training, 10v11, but it’s only for 10 minutes – to do it for 60 minutes (with stoppage time) is tough on the players.
“Mentally there is a fatigue that sets in when you do that for so long and it contributed to the poor decision-making. But the reason we were in that position was really wrong and my team was very hard done by.”
Dundee can’t appeal Sylla’s red card
VAR couldn’t intervene on the decision because it was a yellow card rather than a straight red. And to make matters worse, Dundee can’t appeal it for the same reason.
Docherty will now be without a key player for their next game against Motherwell.
He added: “It’s a second yellow card ,there’s no way of appealing it which is a bitter pill to swallow. I lose a player to suspension so it’s a double whammy.
“We lose the match and then lose an important player for the next match. Mo gives us so much on the pitch and he was great in the first half, the whole team was outstanding. But the first goal going in has a huge impact, we need to stop the bleeding but we don’t do that.
“Whether that’s fatigue but we make poor decisions. I don’t shy away from that. We have a long time now to address that.
“It’s a relatively new group we have together and we have young players probably being a bit naïve in decision-making. It’s something as a manager and coaching staff we don’t shy away from and we’ll be working as hard as we can to ensure we don’t encounter the same situation again.”