Cobblers are having to battle against 'little old Northampton' tag - Kevin Nolan
Kevin Nolan says his side cannot afford to feel ‘too aggrieved’ by decisions going against them after Jack Vale’s highly debatable red card at Lincoln City in midweek.
Nolan believes key decisions have consistently gone against his side this season, with Vale’s sending off the latest example. The striker was attempting a shot inside the Lincoln penalty box when he caught Ben House on the ankle, leading to a straight red card and a three-game ban. Northampton did appeal the decision but to no avail.
A few days earlier, Cameron McGeehan’s late goal against Exeter was ruled out for a very tight offside call, while Nolan was also adamant Cobblers should have had ‘blatant’ penalties against both Reading and Rotherham.
Asked why he feels decisions are going against his team, Nolan replied: "It must be because it's little old Northampton! I remember at Bolton in the Premier League when we were little old Bolton and we'd always battle against everybody's viewpoint of what we were and that's what we have to do now.
"I see some decisions go in favour of teams at the top end of the table and that happens, it's just a thing in football, whether you're in the Premier League or League One, and what we've got to do is not feel too aggrieved by it.
"Hopefully we get a few decisions when we need them because I feel we have been on the wrong end of some big ones. There's been worse tackles against my players than Jack's one on Tuesday night – the one on Michael Forbes at Doncaster comes to mind. That was a very poor challenge which should have been a red card but the referee didn’t see it that way.
"The one on Tuesday, we're all looking at it and thinking 'hmm' and when you have that doubt, it should never be a red card."
Whilst clearly unhappy with the referee’s performance on Tuesday, Nolan did accept that his side were a long way short of their best.
"We have to get back to our strengths because that's not something we did on Tuesday,” he added. "We need to put more balls in the box and that's something I've been asking the players to do. We had opportunities at times the other night but we didn’t do it.
"We just didn't do enough with the ball. We showed what we can do against Stevenage and Reading and we have to get back to that because those were good performances.”