Craig Gordon baffled by game changing Hearts moment in Scottish Cup exit as he provides update on future

Craig Gordon doesn’t know what bracket to out a key refereeing decision against Hearts in - as he provided the latest on his future after a Scottish Cup exit.

Aberdeen won 2-1 at Hampden after extra time but Hearts more than matched the Dons throughout 120 minutes. Michael Steinwender was sent off in the first half but the decision to give Cammy Devlin a second booking for a challenge on Dante Polvara has sparked ire. Oday Dabbagh took advantage and stuck the winner home soon after.

Gordon did not want to dissect referee John Beaton and VAR’s performance in the game. He didn’t know, however, what his gutted teammate had committed to warrant a sending off.

Hearts red baffles Gordon

The veteran said: “I thought we did enough (to take it to penalties), and we would have done if we'd stayed at 10 men. I think going down to nine has killed us. I can't believe that's a second yellow card. For everything that's gone in that game, for that to be a yellow card...It's killed us. The second goal comes from the area Cammy's been defending. Nobody's even asking for a second yellow card for that. That's a massive reason why we haven't managed to take it to pens.

“I'm not going to come here and slate the referee's performance, that's up to him. They'll look back at their performance and evaluate it. We've got to do what we can do, and I think our performance was as good as we could have done in the circumstances. I think we've been let down a little bit by that but all we can do is focus on ourselves.

“He is (gutted). He's going to be involved in so many of those tussles throughout the game. There might be fouls either way, but when two players go in with their feet high, I think it's a soft foul. It could quite easily have gone the other way, he's kicked the bottom of his foot and it's a difficult one to take.

"They both clashed together at the edge of the box and the referee has seen it as a free kick, and the referee has seen enough to give a red card. I don't think it was a bad foul, I don't think it was stopping a dangerous attack, I don't know quite what it fits into to be another yellow card. Maybe a foul, but these fouls happen 30-40 times a game, all over the place.

"I think we gave everything we could , every player who was on that pitch has given everything to try and get through. I think that shows that the group is very much together and trying to do the best they can. It's hard not to feel hard done by. I thought the boys did brilliant. We had a really good shape, defended really well. The back three who came in haven't played a lot of football and they were excellent. It looked like Aberdeen were running out of ideas a little bit towards the end. It felt like we had the upper hand even though we were defending, the boys felt good.”

Future latest

Gordon is out of contract at the end of the season but there will be no imminent decisions on what happens beyond the summer. He said when asked if there had been progress on his future: "No, nothing, just playing as many games as I can until the end of the season and see what happens.”

Hearts now have five bottom six games in the Premiership before the season ends. Gordon added: “We've got to go and win next week. We've got Dundee at home and so we need to get back to winning ways, need to win our home matches. So we need to recover from this physically. I know that mentally it's going to be a difficult one to take for a long time, but we have to get together. I think the lads stuck together brilliantly today and we'll continue to do so going into next week.”