Neil Critchley defended Lawrence Shankland after his penalty miss in Heart of Midlothian's 2-0 loss to Cercle Brugge in the Conference League.

The Hearts captain blazed a spot kick over the bar when the score was 1-0. It led to furstrated chants from the away support directed at the striker.

Critchley also spoke on his frustration of the game, the Hearts support and Yan Dhanda decision.

Read or listen to everything he said:

What's your thoughts on that?

It's a tough one, it feels a bit like deja vu, to be honest with you. A game of fine margins and unfortunately we've come out on the wrong side of it again.

How frustrating is getting with the number of chances in games but not taking them?

Frustrating with a capital F, yeah. If I was sitting here and we'd been well beaten and you get beat by a better team, sometimes it's easier to take if you like. But we're in the game, we're well in the game, arguably the better team, particularly in the second half. And just in those moments that's when you need to score, you need to take chances. We're creating them but we're not scoring and that's obviously a problem.

What do you say to Shankland?

Nothing at the moment, I think he just needs his own space. He's obviously [devastated] as you'd expect him to be after the game in that situation. But I've never criticised a player for stepping up and taking a penalty or missing a penalty. That can happen. We win together and we lose together. 

What would you say to the fans who expressed their frustration?

I understand frustration, I get it. We're desperately disappointed that we've not been able to give them a goal to celebrate or give them three points tonight. It's just natural disappointment, we're all disappointed. When you're travelling in great numbers and you pay money and you come a long way, you have that feeling of wanting to have a good evening, as we all do. Unfortunately, that's not happened.

If Lawrence's penalty went in you would have felt you would have gone onto win the game?

I do, yeah. Because I think second half, when their energy died a little bit and we knew that, they'd leave us space on the pitch and we started to pass the ball better and control the game better. We started to open them up and get into some really good positions in the final third. I felt that was coming, even though they had a chance maybe on the break. They hit the bar but that was just after our penalty miss. I felt we were in the ascendancy and I felt if we scored at that moment... Goals change games, the pivotal moments aren't they, the big moments. We had 10 minutes to go, we get back to 1-1, it's properly game on then, isn't it?

Is there an element of the team relying too much on Shankland?

We wouldn't be in this position if it wasn't for him, because he scored the goals that allowed us to be in this position. Finish where we did last season. It's a team game and it's not just on Lawrence, it's on the other players as well. Kenny [Vargas], Alan [Forrest], Yan [Dhanda], [Blair] Spittal, whoever that is, the forward players, [Liam] Boycie, James Wilson, Barrie McKay, they've all come on and had minutes. You're looking for one of those players to score or create and we've not done that. 

What was the thinking behind Dhanda starting and Spittal on the bench?

Just freshness. Blair has played practically nearly every minute of every game since I've been in charge. No, just freshness. I think we made three changes tonight, just to bring some energy to the team, hopefully. Something different. We wanted to play Yan inside the game and we know that they press with the wing-backs against our full-backs. Sometimes they go three defenders against the front four and we nearly got them in the first half when Alan slid the ball down the side for Kenny. He out-run his defender and that's the space that they leave you. Shanks, unfortunately, with his little flick at the front post, it goes just wide. You need one of them to trickle in for you. It was a little bit of a tactical decision, but more out of freshness than anything.

What would you say about the support in general?

It was unbelievable. I've never experienced something like that before. It was overwhelming. Fantastic support, which makes the disappointment even more when you lose because you know what it means to them. It's the worst feeling in the world when you can't deliver something for so many people, which it means so much more.