The Latics went down 2-1 at Northampton on Saturday but it was referee Charles Breakspear who took centre stage with some hotly-disputed decisions. The sending off and penalty decision being the main talking points in a game where the Latics 10 game unbeaten away record came to an end, even though they played against 10 men in the second half.
Frankie Bunn’s view was, “It's a tough one to take but any loss is. I thought the lads gave everything they got but we had a dubious penalty decision go against us and we should have had one ourselves. That’s how it is at the minute - we just need that little bit of luck. I’ve spoken to the referee but there was no comment from him, so I told him you’ll be horrified when you see it back. It’s been happening too many times and I’m very disappointed with the officiating again. He said he gave it for handball but we’ve looked back at the footage and we’ve asked all the lads and we just can’t see anything so I think he’s guessed. We started really brightly. We said we need to get on top of them early and we did that and we got good possession in the opposition half but we conceded from two set-pieces.”
“It’s one ball down the side and we give a free-kick away. We’ve worked on set-pieces during the week – that was the only way they were going to score and they got two. We never dealt with the second ball on the first one and the second one I don’t think it is a penalty. They then banked in and it became difficult but we conceded the first goal again and then a second and that makes life difficult. They defended well second-half and had a couple of breakaways but we just couldn’t find an opening. I thought we were positive, we loaded the front areas, we got the full-backs playing like wingers and we tried to move the ball quickly but we just couldn’t find the gaps. We got one back but we just ran out of time.”