Town boss Paul Jewell slammed the officials’ failure to award his side a spotkick when Steven Caldwell felled Lee Martin inside the box minutes before Birmingham's last-gasp winner at St Andrew's. Referee Rob Lewis wasn’t well sighted but assistant Amy Fearn was better placed to see what looked a clear foul
Jewell said: "Although the referee didn’t have a very good view, the lineswoman, or whatever she's called, had a great view - it was a stonewall penalty and a sending off. You’ll have to ask her why she didn’t give it. It was a stonewall penalty.
"I asked the referee at the end but there was the wall of silence. But it’s happened, I don’t know why it’s happened because I don’t even think it was a debatable decision, it’s a stonewall penalty.”
Jewell is likely to face scrutiny regarding his criticism of the female official with some newspapers misquoting an early exchange during the post-match press conference.
A reporter asked the Town boss, "I think everyone to a man thought it was a penalty, what's your view?" with the Blues manager responding, "Unfortunately to every man, but not a woman."
Jewell was generally pleased with his team, aside from Nikola Zigic’s two goals: "We defended resolutely, they had a couple of opportunities but we had some good situations on the break that we didn’t make the most of - balls flying across the box.
"The players’ effort was unstinting but the two goals we gave away were bad goals, but in between that there were a lot of good points.”
He felt his team deserved a point and despite the setbacks need to remain resolute and results will then come: "We do need a break but we’ve got to keep going, no one’s going to give us anything for nothing.
"We’ve got to keep going ourselves. We should have had a penalty tonight, we should have got at least a point out of the game.
"It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, you’ve just got to try and keep going, keep working hard and hope that something does turn your way. If we play like that in the coming games, we’ll win more than we lose.
"We’re in the situation we’re in because we haven’t defended well enough for long enough periods in games. Our concentration is why we’ve conceded a lot of goals late on. Zigic is a handful at 6ft 7, 6ft 8 but it’s just so disappointing that we’re conceding goals like we have tonight.”
Jewell praised his team’s spirit with the 569 travelling fans applauding them at the whistle: "The effort was there, the supporters clapped the players off at the end, it was a terrific following from them again.
"It’s a hard luck story and you don’t want to be doing hard luck stories. We’ve conceded in the 92nd or 93rd minute and it does become psychological sometimes.”
He says Jason Scotland and Grant Leadbitter should be fine despite picking up minor injuries: "Jason’s all right, we’ve got a couple of knocks. Grant got a knock, Jason got a kick when we were on the attack, so he had to come off but I think he’ll be OK.”
Jewell says his mind now moves on to the task of lifting his team for Saturday’s game against Blackpool: "It’s not easy but you have to, we’ve got another game on Saturday. There’s no point in moping about. We’ve got to take the positives out of the game tonight.”
Birmingham boss Chris Hughton, who says he didn’t see the penalty incident, was pleased that his side kept going and grabbed another late goal: "The late, late show again. If you score late in the game it shows we’ve got enough character and resilience in the team to want to protect this very good home record that we’ve got, and grateful and delighted for Nikola for both goals.”