Hull City manager Mike Phelan has refused to criticise Robert Snodgrass for his dive against Crystal Palace on Saturday afternoon, saying that the decision of the referee was not his player's responsibility.
Snodgrass' dive won his side a penalty early in the game, which he slotted home himself to give the Tigers a 1-0 lead - and admitted on social media after the match that he should 'never' have been awarded a spot kick for the incident.
That will be of little consolation to Palace fans.
Apologies from my end it was never a penalty, but genuinely thought defender was going to slide, so tried to ride the tackleï'Œ
His manager defended him post-match though, quoted by theHull Daily Mailafter the match saying:"I have a comment and the comment is that the referee is the man in the middle who makes the decision.I'm not going to pull my own player up for a decision that the referee gave. It was a decision that he gave, which was a penalty and Snodgrass put it away.
"I'm sure Alan is aggrieved by it, as I probably would've been at the time. But we have to take what we're given at this level and we've had opportunities of penalties and not got them. This one we did get.
When ref Mike Jones watches the penhe's just given Hull back tonight, his ears are gonna be a bit hot & Snodgrass is an embarrassment!!
"I thought overall the referee showed signs of weird decisions now and again. But I thought there was also probably more than a couple of penalties out there today and he didn't give them.
"I think a referee has a massive, massive job. It's a fast game, it's a physical game, a lot of things happen in a short space of time. I thought he gave what he thought was right and I'm not going to argue with that. I'm not going to pull my player over the coals over for that simply because it's the referee's decision."
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If snodgrass was really guilty about his dive, he would have told the ref at the time. I'm not buying this post match grovelling at all