Sir Alex Ferguson bemoaned the referee's failure to spot a foul by Nikola Zigic after Manchester United were held to a 1-1 draw at Birmingham City.
United appeared to be heading towards only a second Premier League away win of the season when Dimitar Berbatov clinically finished off a slick move on 58 minutes.
However, Birmingham snatched a point a minute from time when Lee Bowyer pounced from close range to steer home Zigic's knock-down.
Ferguson, though, felt Birmingham substitute Zigic had fouled Rio Ferdinand before using his arm to guide the ball into Bowyer's path and was disappointed referee Lee Mason did not spot the offences.
"Handball, a foul on the centre-half, he went right through him," Ferguson told Sky Sports 1.
"If the referee can't see that, what chance have you got?
"At this level, in a game of that importance, you hope you're going to get a referee that can see that. If he can't, what chance have you got?
"I've got no complaints with my team today, they fought hard, they worked hard and had only two days' rest.
"They have run their socks off to get a result and it's hard on them."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Birmingham boss Alex McLeish disagreed: "I've seen it again and it wasn't offside," he said.
"It looks like it's come off Zigic's arm but it doesn't look like he's played it deliberately.
"It was in a melee of players and he was trying to keep the move alive and I think it would have been harsh if he had been penalised for deliberate handball."
Ryan Giggs and Berbatov both hit the post for United and Ferguson felt the leaders were unfortunate not to claim all three points.
He said: "I think it's terribly harsh. I think we outplayed them in the second half and we didn't deserve that.
"But football is a funny game. It's a tight league, it's a difficult place to come here and every team that comes here has a difficult game.
"I think we deserved to win the game. We were the better team, but maybe we should have finished them off after we went 1-0 up.
"There were a number of times we counter-attacked, but we needed more care in our finishing pass and finishing shot. It was just one of those days."
