David Moyes insisted Norwich City’s storming comeback at Carrow Road was ‘unjust’ after Everton lost further ground in the race for a Champions League berth.

The Toffees’ chief confronted referee Lee Mason on the pitch immediately after the final whistle to launch his protest over the amount of stoppage time that allowed Grant Holt to seal a remarkable win.

“It is an unjust scoreline, by all ways you look at it,” said Moyes. “I can’t understand why he played three minutes 20 seconds for the goal.

“If you add on three minutes for 45 minutes in the second half, I think 20 seconds sounds a big percentage to add on top of that. He’s got discretion to do what he likes. I disagree with his discretion.

“He didn’t give me an explanation. It’s his discretion, isn’t it? They can make up anything, can’t they, from that, but I disagree with what he claimed was his discretion. I need to know where his discretion goes to. Was there a reason for the extra 20 seconds? I couldn’t tell you.

“It was tough to take. We have conceded two goals in the last five minutes or so but I think the second goal is well over time, well over the three minutes allocated, so that should not have been given.”

Moyes’ frustration no doubt was fuelled by Everton’s failure to close out a game they controlled following Leon Osman’s first half opener before Kei Kamara’s thumping headed equaliser sparked a superb City onslaught.

“The first half I think was pretty even steven but we got 1-0 up and I thought in the second half we were wasteful,” he said. “We had opportunities to score a second and a third goal. We didn’t and we were always going to be put under pressure at the end. There was no doubt about that. We controlled the game, we passed it well enough, we tried to do the right things but we weren’t good enough in the final third to get the second or third goal.

“One thing is for sure, we didn’t deserve to lose the game – that was a given. I thought we did a lot of good things and played some good football but we don’t look like we are going to come up with the goods in the final third at the moment. We’ve talked about it, looked at it and we need to try and find a way of doing that more.”

The Everton chief conceded Kamara’s vibrant introduction was a game-changer, but castigated his men for surrendering the initiative in a bid to protect their slender lead.

“You start to protect what you’ve got. I think we started to protect what we’d got a bit too early, and we paid the penalty for it,” he said.

“I don’t think we’ve been a side who can keep sitting back. I don’t think that is the case, but I think it happened here. Norwich’s best chances to score were probably going to come from a ball up to Holt or up to the lad (Kamara). He made a difference to Norwich’s team, I thought, and he scored a tremendous leaping header.

“There was always a chance they could score from a corner kick. I think Norwich have one of the best records in the country for scoring from set-pieces and they did it.

“I felt maybe we didn’t get up to the ball quick enough. Perhaps we were trying to see the game out. I thought at 1-0 we had plenty of play and we didn’t capitalise and that is what cost us. We controlled the second half up until the last five minutes.”

“If we’ve got any real ambitions we have to make sure we win that game. At worst, if somebody loses a player at a corner kick – it shouldn’t happen but it does – we should see out a draw. But I think we were unfairly dealt with at the end. We should still deal with it, no excuse, but you’ve also got to say there were mitigating circumstances in that extra time.”