'If you want to be consistent...' - Port Vale boss Darren Moore questions referee decision against Chesterfield

Leading 1-0, Clark was given his marching orders on 50 minutes by referee Andrew Humphries after a tackle on Bim Pepple. That allowed the Spireites to dominate the rest of the game and equalise through Armando Dobra.

"Probably the changing point for Chesterfield was the sending-off,” Moore told BBC Stoke. “Mitch is devastated in there, he is gutted. With what he has tried to do, he has got to get it right. As the ball has come to him he has gone to put his foot on the ball but his foot has rolled over the ball and he has caught the boy (Pepple) on his ankle. So when you look at it, it is a red card, but there is no intent or malice from Mitch’s point of view. We have to accept it and that is where the pendulum swung. We had to change shape and go to a mid-deep block.”

Although Moore had no problem with that decision, he felt Tom Naylor could have been sent off early in the first-half. He explained: "I am not one for getting players sent off but the incident here in the 12th minute between Rekeem (Harper) and Tom Naylor is a terrible one. Rekeem got to the ball first and if you want to stay consistent in terms of red cards, then if you look at that incident, I will let everyone else make up their own minds. That is a bit of a disappointment but we have to move on.”

Jayden Stockley gave Vale a second minute lead and they had some other dangerous moments on the counter-attack in the first-half. But Clark’s red card allowed Town to take control and a mistake from Tom Sang allowed Dobra to pounce on 76 minutes. In the end. Moore felt it was two points dropped because it was his team’s ‘own doing.’

“We had a magnificent start and really took the game to them,” he continued. “We always thought that once we took the lead it would be a difficult game for them and we knew they would throw caution to the wind and we had two or three opportunities to double our advantage and we either chose the wrong pass or probably didn’t show a bit of composure in the final third. We probably thought we could have won the game in the first-half. I thought we came here and controlled the game in a difficult arena.

"It is probably two points dropped by us today by our own doing because you get the red card and then you have to camp in. The second-half just became defence against attack. I didn’t think they had that many chances, they put the ball in the box a couple of times, a couple of long-range efforts, and for the goal to come for them in the manner that it did, that’s what I mean when I say that it was our own doing so that’s why we were disappointed.”