Salford City denied 'blatant' penalty in defeat against Chesterfield, claims Karl Robinson
Salford City manager Karl Robinson said his team were denied a ‘blatant’ penalty in the 2-0 defeat against Chesterfield.
With the Spireites 1-0 up thanks to an own goal from Ollie Turton, the visitiors claimed for a spot-kick when Kelly N’Mai felt that Chey Dunkley handled the ball in the box. But Sam Wesson, who had stepped up from fourth official to take over from injured referee Oliver Mackey, rejected the appeals. Ronan Darcy then scored a second for Town to seal the three points.
Robinson said: “In the first-half, even though we did not play well, we denied opportunities for the opposition. When you go away from home, you don’t let their crowd get up, you don’t let them have chance after chance, and we did that.
"I felt in the second-half, again, it was very even. For the first goal we lost the first aerial duel and the header is actually missing but we ended up putting the ball into the back of our net.
"The chance for Dan (Udoh) is a great chance, probably the best chance of the game, other than their second goal. There is a blatant penalty for Kelly N’Mai. So if you look between goal one and goal two, we probably had the best moment in the game. There were moments in that game that we did not take when they came along.”
The defeat for Salford is their third on the bounce in the league and it means they swap places with Chesterfield, who climb from ninth to sixth.
Summing the game up, Robinson added: "When I watch the game back I think I will see that both teams we were very secure. It was us losing a man from a corner, not taking a chance, not getting a penalty, and then conceding when we were chasing.
"If you look at the game in isolation, their two centre-backs probably won 90% of their aerial duels, I don’t think we were in the high 60s. We as a collective have got to make sure that we do not make the small things habits. We have to take responsibility for individuals errors and that is in both boxes at the moment. We miss chances and we concede chances through our own errors.”