Salford City boss Karl Robinson slams official after red card decision 'changed game' against Chesterfield

Referee Darren Drysdale sent off the former Doncaster Rovers man on 24 minutes, with the scoreline 0-0, following an off-the-ball incident on Jack Sparkes. It had been an open start to the game with both teams having chances but the Spireites took control after that, scoring twice before half-time and two more after the break to win 4-0.

Robinson said: “I felt at 11 v 11 we were the better team, I thought we had two or three opportunities that we never took. The sending off changed the game. I thought even when we went down to 10-men we looked really good, I thought we had some really good opportunities.”

Adelakun was given his marching orders after Sparkes went down off the ball. Drysdale went over to speak to the linesman, who spotted it, before showing the red card.

Robinson continued: "The lad (Sparkes) has stamped on Haks, on his toe, and Haks has just swiped at his lower legs. You can’t knock the opposition’s player, he went down really well and managed to get the decision that they wanted. I can’t grumble at the way they acted. I can see why he thinks he has actually kicked him and lashed out which would be borderline, for me, a yellow card. But the way it goes against us, it was always going to be a red.”

Robinson, who could be in trouble for his next comments, added: “I don’t trust the assistant referee today, his performance was so far off, it was unacceptable. There were two offside decisions in the first-half which you must have seen our bench go crazy at. So how can I trust him to get the big decisions right if he can’t get the easy ones?”

Two goals from Liam Mandeville, his first strikes of the season, and finishes from Bim Pepple and Armando Dobra secured Chesterfield’s first away win in three months.

Robinson said: "It was way too long for us to be able to hold on or anything. We were always going to be under pressure. If I had to critique the whole of our season, we have missed way too many opportunities to score goals. We don’t seem to score goals when we are on top.”