MARK McGhee, the Motherwell manager, last night threatened to consult his lawyer about the performance of fourth official John McKendrick after getting sent to the stand in his side's 7-2 defeat to Aberdeen.
McGhee had to spend the last half an hour of the Ladbrokes Premiership match at Pittodrie sitting in the Main Stand being heckled by the home team's fans as his side crashed to a heavy and humiliating loss.
He claimed afterwards that the official had taken an aggressive and hostile decision towards him before a ball had even been kicked and had "an agenda" against him.
"I’m absolutely horrified by the attitude of the fourth official," said McGhee. I’m absolutely disgusted and horrified.
"I can’t express that strongly enough. I don’t want this to become a thing above the result and for it to become a distraction. It was a poor result.
"But the fourth official, before a ball was kicked, was causing issues which were unnecessary.
"I’d no feelings about getting involved. I was sitting on the bench making a couple of jokes about certain decisions and he reacted right away. It was absolutely diabolical his attitude. I’m absolutely horrified by it.
"I’m not blaming the referee – he’s got to do what he (the fourth official) says. But his attitude was disgusting. I’m shocked that I was subjected to that. It was totally unfair and unnecessary."
Asked he would speak to John Fleming, the head of refereeing at the SFA, about the performance of McKendrick, he said: "Speak to John Fleming? I’ll speak to a lawyer about it. I start to think there is an agenda.
"Why is he starting like that before a ball is kicked? Aggressive and hostile – that’s the way it was. Totally unnecessary.
"Ive never seen the man in my life before. He called the referee over. There was an incident when the ball was a yard out and they stopped because they knew it was out. We all laughed, that’s what I did - I had no intention of getting involved.
"The very fist one I was involved with was there was a 50-50 duel in the air and Derek (Aberdeen manager McInnes) claimed a throw-in for Aberdeen, which it wasn’t in a million years.
"I said it was ‘embarrassing’ to Faddy (Motherwell assistant manager James McFadden), that Derek was claiming it when the Aberdeen player was a yard away from the ball.
"The fourth official was immediately on to me: ’Say anything like that again and I’m going to call over the referee.’ That was in the first minute of the game."
McGhee, whose side scored two late consolation goals through Ryan Bowman and Stephen Pearson, admitted Motherwell's performance was unacceptable.
"We started badly and never recovered," he said. "We set out to play exactly as they played. We were aware of the poor quality of the pitch and we wanted to keep it simple – to try and get in behind them.
"We tried to do what they were doing but they did it better than us and at he end of it they scored some goals. We’ve no arguments with it. We started badly and finished badly.
"The goals we lost were diabolical. They’ve all got their hands up in there: ‘That goal we lost was my fault, that other one was mine.’ It was uncharacteristic. We lose games, but not usually in that manner. It was poor but we’ll go away and lick our wounds.
"At least we’ve got an easier game on Saturday (Motherwell play Celtic at Parkhead)."
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