A draw would have been a fair result, but the Hoops lost against a team they have not beaten in more than 19 years.

And after seeing his side’s three-match winning run ended by what he felt was a poor decision to award the penalty, McClaren could not hide his anger.

He said: “It had 0-0 written all over it. I didn’t think either side looked like scoring.

“I thought, after the first 10 minutes, the team defended magnificently. We were never going to concede. I couldn’t see it, and we just needed to produce a bit of quality going forward to win the game.

“We didn’t; our final ball and cross wasn’t good enough but we didn’t deserve to lose. I’ve seen the penalty again. It’s not a penalty, and the one that’s got to give it is the linesman who is 15 yards away. I thought it was a poor decision.

“The referee, I thought, even for both teams, had a poor game.

“I didn’t think that performance was very good. A lot of decisions for both teams were sometimes a little bit mind-boggling, but we nearly got the point.

“We didn’t deserve more, but we’ll go back to the drawing board and continue what we’re doing. We never looked in trouble, but as I say, a little bit more quality going forward and we’d have won that game, but we didn’t deserve to lose it.”

Rovers moved up to eighth, just a point outside the top six after notching their second successive home league win – the first time they have managed that this season.

After the game, Tony Mowbray described the game as “ugly” but was pleased his side got over the line.

He said: “It was an ugly game, a horrible game really. There wasn’t much quality on the pitch and yet the referee kept stopping the game, slowing it down.

“It looked 0-0 all the way. We were trying to make attacking changes at the end and it ultimately paid off for us at the end.

“The lads came in afterwards and nobody was getting over excited. You have to win ugly sometimes. It’s part and parcel of football. We will be better, we have been better and dropped points so let’s be happy we’ve got three points in the bag.

“Nobody will remember this performance down the line, they will just see how many points we’ve got. Put that in the bag and move onto the next one.

“I felt we didn’t deserve to lose it. The question doesn’t need an answer. It doesn’t matter. We did win it.

“We didn’t really play well and are disappointed with the general performance. I think it takes two teams to make a good game. It wasn’t a very good game but we won.

“Did we deserve to win it? It doesn’t matter, we did.”

ga('create', 'UA-72310761-1', 'auto', {'name': 'pacontentapi'});
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'referrer', location.origin);
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension1', 'By Press Association Sport staff');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension2', '32b71f19-693f-4355-9e69-b6f7e8fe1928');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension3', 'paservice:sport,paservice:sport:club-news,paservice:sport:football,paservice:sport:match-reports');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension6', 'story');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension7', 'composite');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension8', null);
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension9', 'sport:football');
ga('pacontentapi.send', 'pageview', { 'location': location.href, 'page': (location.pathname + location.search + location.hash), 'title': 'Steve McClaren slams \u2018mind-boggling\u2019 refereeing as QPR slip to late defeat'});