"I hate the way the game is going" - Sheffield United boss on his red card during defeat to Middlesbrough

Although he admitted he “deserved” to be dismissed by Andre Marriner after protesting about events during the build-up to the visitors’ third goal - when James McAtee was fouled by Hayden Hackney moments before Cameron Archer sealed their 3-1 win - Heckingbottom insisted the referee’s decision to play what proved a brief advantage highlighted a serious fault within the English game.

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“I don’t like getting sent-off and it was right that I was,” he told The Star. “That’s not what I was frustrated about. It’s just that every single match we see that, where someone stays on their feet and gets nothing for it. My frustration doesn’t come from one incident. It’s because it’s a trend.”

“We’ve got three good ball carriers in there, including James and Sander (Berge),” Heckingbottom continued. “They are continually fouled or dragged back and get nothing for staying on their feet. It’s reaching the point where we are going to have to tell them to go down, otherwise they are going to end up being punished twice.

“Macca gets dragged back, he (Marriner) waves an advantage and four seconds or whatever later, they have scored. If Macca had gone down, then that doesn’t happen and their lad gets booked. You see it time and time again. A little bit of contact and people go down. I hate the way the game is going. I don’t like it. But that’s the situation.”

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Despite suffering their first defeat in all competitions since the beginning of November, second placed United still finished the fixture with a seven point lead over their opponents who are third. Oli McBurnie fired the hosts’ into an early lead but Michael Carrick’s men seized control of the contest following Chuba Akpom’s equaliser. Archer claimed the first of his brace soon after the interval before netting again with a little over a quarter-of-an-hour remaining.

Heckingbottom, whose squad return to action at Millwall on Saturday, met a representative from the Professional Game Match Officials board earlier this term to complain about a number of issues he had raised following several controversial incidents.

Acknowledging Middlesbrough warranted a result which keeps the race for automatic promotion alive, he said: “The strange thing is, the referees are with me on what I’ve brought up. If I ask about these fouls. I’ll get an email back saying ‘yes, you’re right.’ I know that. Like I say, my frustration isn’t about this here. It’s because, just as when you bring a kid up, you don’t want to reward the wrong behaviour. In this case, we’re not rewarding the right behaviour.”

Carrick later revealed his delight after seeing Middlesbrough close the gap on United, saying: “It was a really good result against a really good team. We knew, coming here, that we would have to play well and we did that I thought.”