Decisions went against us - Westley

GRAHAM Westley said he was disappointed that too many decisions went against his side at Chesterfield on Saturday.

The Boro manager pointed to Michael Bostwick’s sending off for two bookable offences, a disallowed Mark Roberts goal and what turned out to be seven added minutes in injury time as decisions which went against his team.

“I think it was disappointing that in the end having locked them out for the large part of the second half...(there were) decisions that made an impact on the game.

“Bozzie was disappointed to have walked. The (Chesterfield) players’ reaction seemed to have a big effect on that decision. We were gutted to see the Ashton knock back (for Roberts’ goal) cancelled out. We were expecting a penalty we have to say as the boy’s arm was all over Ash as he knocks it back across goal so it was disappointing to have that taken away from us. It was bemusing to have six, seven, eight minutes played at the end.

“I thought the lads on the whole showed the progress they’ve made since we came here in January. We had moved before play 26 places up and (Chesterfield) had moved eight places up...it was a progressive afternoon in terms of showing the progress we’ve made, but a disappointing one in terms of some of the decisions that seemed to go against us and obviously to lose the late goal we’ll point the fingers at ourselves for that.

“The ball was in play, we should have defended better, the goalkeeper’s held his hand up and said he should have done his job at the back post from a cross that was hung and you can only respect players that have honesty about them.”

Responding specifically to one journalist’s question about Bostwick’s red card, Westley said: “You’ve watched the game, you ask the question about ‘unlucky’. I think Bostwick’s second yellow was a fairly innocuous challenge. I think you would have seen probably 10-15-20 other similar challenges in the game go unpunished. Mass reaction, and the referee under that pressure has made the decision he’s made.”

Stevenage visit AFC Bournemouth this evening (Tuesday).