Craig McLeish admitted his St Mirren side paid a severe penalty after conceding their tenth spot-kick of the campaign in a 2-0 defeat to Rangers.
The Buddies boss was left frustrated after seeing his side lose following Nick Walsh's controversial decision to punish Samuel Ramos 18 minutes in. James Penrice hit the deck inside the box after having his heels clipped by Saints' Spanish frontman.
The decision split the pundits, with Record Sport columnist Chris Sutton claiming on Sky Sports that the Ibrox defender had played Walsh "like a piccolo" after accusing him of going down easily.
McLeish's frustration
McLeish chose his words carefully as he reacted to the incident. But he admits his team needs to clean up their act inside the box having now dished out seven spot-kicks in the league, in addition to the three they conceded in the Premier Sports Cup earlier this season.
He said: "My thoughts on the penalty. If that's the criteria for contact in the box, then fine. But Ismael Kabia gets wiped out in the second half after he puts a cross in. I don't even know if anyone looks at it.
"We get an apology after the game at Ibrox for a penalty that we should have got on Kabs again where there was a decent amount of contact on it. I get that if the ref gives it on the field, then it's maybe difficult for VAR to overturn it.
"I think if he doesn't give it there and then, I don't think VAR gets involved to give it.
"It's a difficult one and it's a frustrating one from our point of view, but there's also bits leading up to it getting to that situation that we need to deal with better.
"I need to be careful with what I'm saying. It's a frustrating one from our point of view. Did I speak to the ref afterwards? No, there's no point.
"But somebody just told me that there, it's like our seventh penalty we've given away in 13 games, which from our point of view is not good enough. We can't give teams goals and put ourselves in a hole like that."
Battle despite defeat
Saints battled on manfully despite losing a second to a deflected Dan Neil strike. They'd have pulled one back were it not for two huge saves from Ivor Pandur denying substitutes Eseosa Sule and Luke Thomas.
But McLeish was proud of his players' efforts despite seeing their recent slump extend to one win in nine.
He said: "We responded well to [losing the penalty] and then thought second half we came out with good aggression and we created some better chances and got into some really good areas.
"We're just maybe lacking a little bit of quality in the final third, our final action, final decision, final pass.
"But I can't ask any more of the boys from how they played, how they tried to perform, the energy they showed, they tried to do all the things that we were looking for through the week.
"We won the ball back in their half and we played forward quickly and we tried to hurt them when we could and we knew we had to stay patient defensively as well. There's a lot of really good aspects of our game tonight, a lot of positives.
"My frustration is probably that we need to show that more often and more consistently.
"Because last week against Motherwell we didn't really carry much threat, we carried much more threat tonight against a, it's no disrespect to Motherwell, but a stronger opposition.
"And that's the bit we now need to find, we've shown really high levels at points throughout the season and we need to show it more often."
