Mick McCarthy today insisted Wolves felt as if their hearts had been ripped out after blasting officials’ bad decisions against Newcastle at Molineux.

Wolves were denied a clear penalty in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat when referee Mark Halsey failed to spot Steven Taylor’s foul on Jamie O’Hara was inside the area, instead giving a free kick.

Then, after Steven Fletcher made it 2-1, the linesman deemed Matt Jarvis to have headed the ball back from out of play for Kevin Doyle to equalise in stoppage time.

“When you’ve worked as hard as my lads did and think you’ve equalised, to have that go against you tends to rip the heart out of you,” admitted McCarthy.

“Even at the time I thought the first one was a penalty – and I didn’t need any convincing when I saw it again.

“I spoke to Mark (Halsey) and he said he didn’t want to guess. Well he got it wrong. Jamie was a good yard inside the box.

“I thought the one that went in might have been disallowed for offside but it was for being out of play – well, it wasn’t, so Doyle’s goal should have stood.”

But McCarthy conceded poor defending which left Wolves 2-0 down at half-time for the fourth game in a row was more costly.

Demba Ba was unmarked to head home a corner then, astonishingly, Jonas Gutierrez beat five players for the second.

“We should have won without the officials’ decisions,” said the boss.

“We blame ourselves first because our defending cost us.”

But McCarthy insists The Hawthorns is the ideal place for Wolves to turn the tide in the Black Country derby in 13 days’ time.