Furious Neil Critchley slammed ref Andrea Colombo over the penalty award he says cost Hearts a chance to throw everything at a late leveller in Copenhagen.

The Jambos lost 2-0 to the Danish Superlig leaders and now need to take something from next Thursday’s final league phase game at home to Petrocub to secure a Conference League play-off spot. But Critchley was raging at the 78th minute penalty awarded after a VAR check when Craig Gordon was adjudged to have fouled Amin Chiakha after a collision in the six-yard box.

Copenhagen's Kevin Diks buried the penalty to end Hearts’ hopes after Chiakha had opened the scoring early in the second half. And Critchley - who also saw defender Frankie Kent leave the ground in a leg brace after going off injured in the first half - said: “We played against a very good team, I think that was obvious, you can see that, the evidence was on the pitch for us to see that. They were a better team, they deserved to win.

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“You plan to have a go but then their technical quality can sometimes limit how you can get after the ball and press and when you do that they play through you or play beyond you, it's very difficult.

“But really poor decision has taken away our chance of having a right go near the end of the game which is what I'd spoken about at half-time. We had a plan and we're on the cusp of doing that and changing and going for the game because you might as well go for it 1-0, press, go after them, really go after them.

“He gets there first and he kicks the ball onto Craig's arm, you can see it deflects off his arm and then there's a collision, there's always going to be a collision because he's flying for the ball and Craig's coming out. It's just a natural coming together of players, it's not like he's touched it past him and Craig's come down and caught him.

“It's never a penalty, I think it's a bad decision, a really bad decision. How that's gone to the VAR and given a penalty I don't really know, honestly.”

The defeat - a third straight loss in the competition - piles the pressure on next week's clash with Petrocub at Tynecastle. A point could be enough to secure the play-off spot but a win would guarantee it.

Critchley said: “I’d imagine we'd have to win next week. We're in there, we're still in shape, we're in with a fight. Obviously we've won the first two games and we've lost the last three so you can have that psychological effect on the group.

“But if we'd have lost the first three and won the next two we'd be feeling better about ourselves. We're still in there, we've got six points and if we get to nine then I think we qualify. We have to use the power and the energy of Tynecastle next Thursday to our advantage and that will be our plan.”

Kent looked in some distress as he hobbled off after 35 minutes. Fellow defender Craig Halkett also pulled up with a back niggle ahead of the game. Critchley added: “That's a big disappointment from the night.

“It looks like the same injury for Frankie: quad. Halks trained yesterday. He was in a bit of discomfort, we were hoping it was going to be better overnight. But it didn't really improve, he was having treatment on it today, so unfortunately he wasn't able to go on the bench. We're a little bit stretched in that area of the pitch at the moment.”