Rosenior fumes with spot-kick decision as Hull lose

Liam Rosenior was left fuming with the second-half penalty decision that cost his Hull side a point at Bristol City.

Robins substitute Nahki Wells drilled home a 70th-minute spot-kick after Cyrus Christie had been judged by referee Sam Barrott to have blocked Anis Mehmeti’s driven cross with an arm.

The 1-0 victory stretched the home side’s unbeaten run to 12 games but, while former Robins player Rosenior was full of praise for his old team, he had no doubts that Hull were hard done by.

“It was not a penalty. There is no way Cyrus could have got out of the way because the ball was driven at him,” he said.

“He never went to deliberately handle the ball and you just want common sense in that situation.

“But it was not the reason we lost. Our team performance was very much below par.

“We reacted well to falling behind, but I want that sort of performance from the start of games.

“It is no good playing well for 25 minutes out of the 90. We were fortunate to go in at the break with game goalless.

“The second half was better and we hit a post, but you have to make your own luck in the Championship and we didn’t deserve any today.

“I want to see the reaction we showed to going behind from the first whistle. We didn’t have that today and I find that bitterly disappointing.

“Nigel Pearson is doing a great job at my old club and they have some excellent young players.

“I can accept losing because that is part of football, but I cannot accept our first-half performance.

“Our two centre-backs were magnificent, but I don’t want to watch last-ditch defending. I want to see us 30 yards up the pitch dealing with opposition attacks.”

Bristol City boss Pearson, celebrating two years in the job, was in no mood to sympathise with Rosenior over the penalty.

“On the opening day of the season at their place, we had two stonewall appeals turned down, while they were awarded a highly dubious one,” he said.

“I can understand Liam’s frustration, but I can’t express sympathy when we went 400 odd days without being awarded a penalty and had other several obvious ones not given by officials.

“This was a hard-earned win against a side who defended their box with a lot of commitment.

“We got into some really good positions in the first half without finding that cutting edge.

“In the second half, we still looked dangerous and finished the game strongly.

“It’s nice to go into our FA Cup tie with Manchester City on Tuesday night with a good result behind us.

“Twelve games unbeaten is a real upturn in form for us and, while I always look for improvement, the players deserve a great deal of credit.

“It suggests that all the work put in over two years is proving worthwhile. I would like to think we are moving in the right direction.

“There is still a long way to go to be as good as we can be. But at least we have dealt with some of the issues we needed to address as a club.”

“We are in a better place to take on the next challenge and that is how you evolve as a club.”