Mellon claims ref blunder cost United the game
Micky Mellon reckons blundering match officials cost Dundee United the chance to stage a Scottish Cup semi-final comeback.
Assistant referee Alan Mulvanny failed to spot that Hibs striker Christian Doidge was offside before he put his team two goals ahead.
United were trailing to a first-half Kevin Nisbet strike by that point but starting to show a bit of life.
But Mellon feels the second goal “took the wind out of their sails” and left his players with too much to do.
And the Tannadice boss believes whistler Bobby Madden and his assistants needed to get the major decisions right with so much at stake.
Mellon said: “A really poor decision goes against us to put us 2-0 down when we’re thinking we can maybe gain a wee bit of momentum in the second half.
“These are big moments and you have to get them right. At that point we were coming back into it. Momentum was building.
“You know you’re going to get to a time when you’ll get an opportunity to maybe get that equaliser that takes the game into a different stage.
“But that second goal takes the wind out of your sails and leaves you with a lot to do, especially in a big game like this.
“The officials strut about all afternoon, don’t take control of the time-wasting or the gamesmanship.
“You expect that to be dealt with by the ref. He never did that all day but you’ve got to be careful what you say because you get yourself into trouble.
“We won’t hear people saying we have to get these decisions better or get any kind of apology, people saying they got it wrong. We’ll just have to move on.”
But Mellon also admitted that United hadn’t played as well as he would have liked.
He added: “To get to this stage and lose is always going to be massively disappointing.
“But, over the course of the game, I don’t think we showed enough personality – or enough of the things we knew we’d need to be good at – to try to get a positive result.
“When the wee moments came for us we didn’t show the quality that is needed on these days.”
United’s on-loan striker Marc McNulty – who didn’t rule out returning to Tannadice next season – also felt the better team had won on the day.
He said: “It was a frustrating and disappointing day for us but I think it was a deserved outcome. I think Hibs were the better team overall.
“They got a stroke of luck with the second goal which was offside but other than that they were the better team, certainly the more clinical.”