Stuart Kettlewell accused ref Ross Hardie of talking to his Motherwell side like school children.
The Fir Park gaffer admitted his men were left miffed by the whistler’s attitude – and he was left baffled by some of the decisions. Kettlewell felt Celtic’s penalty for the opener was soft and he was stunned Tawanda Maswanhise was booked for diving in the box. But it was the referee’s attitude that grated with his players.
Kettlewell said: “What they were a wee bit irked with today was by the referee’s demeanour and how he communicates with them. If you speak to someone in the appropriate fashion, then I think you’ll get better reactions from players. I don’t think you’ll get as much petulance and as much firing at the referee. That’s nothing to do with the decisions, but it’s probably just a wee feeling for me that we can all have a conversation.
“I’ll take my bit on that as well. I can be a bit emotional, so can football players, but sometimes you just need to put it on a level and almost not having the mannerisms as if you’re a kid at school to waft you away from situations. Communicate, speak, give players an understanding of what your thought process was and I’m sure they’ll respect you.”
Kettlewell felt the penalty award after Yang was caught by Aston Oxborough was harsh and the yellow card for Maswanhise left him scratching his head. He said: “At the time my gut feeling was that it was soft in terms of how the Celtic player went down from what I felt was minimal to little, if any, contact.
“However, that goes against you but that’s not the game done. We think about trying to galvanise ourselves and coming out stronger in the second half. I was really disappointed by the nature of the second and third goals that Celtic scored.
“This is where I’m left baffled. I don’t think it’s a penalty, but it’s not a dive. I’m kind of blown away by that, I really am.
“That’s incredibly frustrating because it comes back to this level of consistency in the decisions that we make, that we see that are completely different from, for example, the Celtic penalty. I struggle to see that there’s a ridiculous amount more contact in either situation.”