Well boss ref rant as whistler Kevin Clancy doesn't allow cup clash stoppage time

Raging Motherwell boss Stuart Kettlewell tore a strip off referee Kevin Clancy after the bungling whistler didn't allow stoppage time at the end of their 3-0 Viaplay Cup win over East Fife.

With Motherwell 3-0 up thanks to strikes from Lennon Miller, Conor Wilkinson and Callum Slattery, Kettlewell says he was trying to push his players forward to get another goal and be sure of a seeded place in Sunday's last-16 draw, when Clancy blew for full-time right on the 90 minutes.

With penalty shoot-outs taking place elsewhere, that left Motherwell in a sweat to see if they would end up going through to the last 16 as one of the seeded teams.

Kettlewell, who pointed out that the Premiership side may have needed an extra goal to be sure of that, confronted the Clancy at full-time, and says it's a lesson the official will have learned.

He said: "Fortunately, by the look of it, we're a seeded team, which is great, but that could have been the difference.

"We're trying to push our players on to see if we can score more goals and the referee ends the game before he should.

"It was important that we tried to put ourselves into a position where we could be seeded.

"We spoke about it at the start of the competition, we mentioned it at half-time because we felt there was an opportunity to create more chances, score more goals and put yourself in a better position.

"Of course you're going for that, but it was a real strange chain of events, hence my conversation with the referee at the end of the game.

"He stopped the game on 90 minutes - there was a head knock, where Conor Wilkinson was down for easily three minutes, there were 10 substitution in the game, and when I asked the referee the question, he told me he felt we had had enough in