Steve Lomas believes luck has been against his St Johnstone side in recent weeks.

The Perth club currently occupy fifth spot in the Scottish Premier League table but haven’t won in their last four domestic games.

Hearts knocked the Saints out of the Scottish Cup in their last fixture, having been seconds away from a win before Jamie Hamill converted an injury time penalty.

"We are bitterly disappointed with it," Lomas said of that penalty award. "We feel we haven't had, shall I say, the rub of the green from decisions over the last three or four weeks.

"The penalty decision I have seen umpteen times now and it wasn't a penalty.

"We feel very aggrieved that a decision has cost us a game, like we were very aggrieved with the Dave Mackay sending off.

"Like we were very aggrieved with Rangers' first goal when the free-kick wasn't taken in the right place.

"But, I suppose, you can sometimes get a little run where you don't get the rub of the green."

Despite their misfortune, Lomas believes he is still getting the required performance levels from his team and wants them to continue, in the hope they can pick up a win against Aberdeen on their travels this weekend.

"I couldn't ask anymore in terms of the performance from the lads on Tuesday night.

"I thought they were different class bouncing back from a very peculiar game against Dundee United [where we lost 5-1].

"We don't feel that we've had much luck over the past three or four weeks, although I have been pretty happy with the level of performance apart from the Dundee United game.

"We think key moments have definitely hurt us and we felt very aggrieved with the decision on Tuesday.

"A lot of people say it evens itself up, but it certainly doesn't feel like that at the minute.

"We were 10 seconds away from being in the quarter-finals so it is a tough one to take, but hopefully it is just a little run of bad misfortune.

"We just hope that maybe our luck changes because we definitely feel like we have been on the wrong end of the decisions."