Boss says Preston are ‘refereed differently’ after home loss to Birmingham

Paul Heckingbottom criticised the officials after Preston’s 1-0 defeat to Birmingham in the Sky Bet Championship.

Phil Neumann directed home Alexander Cochrane’s free-kick in the 33rd minute and the Blues held out for victory.

However, referee Lewis Smith angered Heckingbottom for a series of decisions that appeared to go against Preston, including some late calls for penalties with challenges on Milutin Osmajic and Lewis Dobbin.

The Preston boss said: “[The officials] shouldn’t be allowed to have that much of an influence on a game of football. It’s scandalous, really.

“Anyone who watches us knows we are refereed to a different standard to everyone else and you can see that out there today.

“I wasn’t going to say anything about it at all but when I’m looking back, I feel I have to defend the club and the players and the fans.”

On VAR, he claimed: “I’m a fan of VAR because we’d have won that game with VAR – would have won so many games last season off VAR. That’s my point but 100 per cent we’re refereed differently to other teams.

“VAR for me is bringing another person into it who absolutely doesn’t deserve to be in the game and knows nothing about football. Absolute nonsense, and it kills the atmosphere in stadiums.

“I hate it as a fan but when you’re involved in football, when you’re witnessing that, no one associated with Preston deserves that.”

It was Birmingham’s first win in five games and manager Chris Davies was full of praise for his players.

He said: “We were excellent. I think we fully deserved it.

“I think we started really brightly. I was really happy at the start we made because you know what’s going to be like here. [They’re] a good team, in good form, and are very strong here at Deepdale. I think we had to start well.

“I thought we did that aggressively, (were) strong in the duels, and then we looked bright when we had possession.

“There were some nice passages and we got forward well a few times. So I really liked (the performance) and we were rewarded with the goal and then I really felt we could have gone two up.

“I think Lewis (Koumas) had a chance to score (a minute later), but I think the defender cleared it when the keeper was out of the goal.”

“I said to the players that we needed to be brilliant at the basics tonight and I thought that was a good example of doing that.”

Davies was also delighted with the winner coming from a dead-ball situation, adding: “We have been working on set-pieces. I don’t remember winning a game since I’ve been here on a set-piece.”