by Martin Spinks

TONY Pulis refused to pile all the blame on referee Rob Styles in the wake of Stoke City's controversial exit from the Carling Cup quarter-finals last night.

Pulis was privately seething after Styles disallowed a first-half goal from Richard Cresswell ... and then, even more controversially, awarded a last-gasp penalty for Nathan Ellington to win the tie 1-0 for Derby in the 94th minute.

"The biggest complaint for me was the disallowed goal," said Pulis. "It hits Cressy in the stomach. I've seen the replay and there's no way his hand is near it – and Styles is only two yards away from it.

"If Cressy scores, we get our noses in front and go on to win the game.

"On the penalty, Styles is at the back of the goal and there's 20 bodies in front of him – and he's given it.

"To make a decision like that when he's that far away, and when the linesman doesn't give it, is a big disappointment.

"But I don't want to talk about him. It was our fault we lost. We didn't take our chances.

"I'm not here to slaughter the ref. He's made a couple of bad decisions, but my players have made a couple of bad decisions too."

Pulis was particularly puzzled by Ricardo Fuller's unusually wayward finishing as Stoke blew the chance to reach their first senior semi-final since winning the same competition in 1972.

"The opportunity to get into the semi-finals doesn't come around very often," Pulis added, "and we really got that into the players this week.

"They have given it their best shot, but it wasn't our day.

"We created chances and Ricardo could have scored four himself. Ric is through in the second half with only the keeper to beat, but he's taken too much time.

"When Mama (Sidibe) passed another effort wide in the second half, I thought this will go into extra-time and maybe penalties. So to get beat so late is desperately disappointing for us."

Pulis insisted he had respected the significance of a tie attracting another crowd of well over 20,000 – for a ninth time this season.

"I didn't want to disappoint our supporters and I feel I put out a team to win the game," he said.

"It was a good, open cup tie. We wanted to win it in 90 minutes and played a bit open. Sometimes these things go for you, but here they have gone for Derby.

"No-one is more disappointed than the players in the dressing room. Now we must pick ourselves up for a big game at Newcastle on Saturday."

Stoke's misery was compounded by the prospect of missing out on more Championship opposition in the semi-finals after Burnley beat Arsenal 2-0 at Turf Moor.