McCarthy: Ref played a part in Wolves´ loss

Dejected Wolves manager Mick McCarthy claimed referee Mark Halsey had to shoulder some of the blame for his side’s 2-1 home loss to Newcastle United.

Two first-half goals for the visitors from Demba Ba and Jonas Gutierrez enabled Alan Pardew’s side to take all the spoils, with Steven Fletcher grabbing a late goal to give the home side hope at the end.

However, a penalty claim and a late disallowed goal that looked as though it was kept in play before the whistle went for a goal-kick, meant that McCarthy had to walk away from the game empty handed, with the manager placing blame on the match official.

McCarthy told reporters: “I’d probably be justified in doing so, but we gave two goals away to start with that came right out of the blue, we didn’t defend the corner very well and then conceded another soft one, albeit a good finish because we had enough chances to be in the game, but when you’re having a tough time you do rely on people getting decisions right and quite clearly they got them wrong.”

“Mark Halsey said he didn’t want to guess, but he did and he guessed wrong. He’s (Doyle) about a yard in the area, not just a little bit, and when you’ve worked as hard as my lads have at the end of the game, to get that equaliser which we thought we’d got and deserved, to have that decision go against you, it tends to rip your heart out a little.”

McCarthy accepted that some of the blame was to be placed on his players after slack defending allowed Ba to grab a free header from a Yohan Cabaye corner and Gutierrez to drift inside the area to get his team’s second.

“Both were poor goals, but we’d had some better chances than (Jonas) Gutierrez had actually to put the ball in the net, but we didn’t do it and we can point the finger at ourselves for some wasteful finishing,” he said.