Stanley manager John Coleman believes that the three points were ‘stolen’ from his team in their match against Hartlepool on Tuesday night.

The Reds lost 2-0 to the home side after a controversial penalty decision from referee Richard Clark, resulting in the sending off of Mark Hughes, reducing Coleman’s team down to 10 men.

The Stanley manager felt that played a big part in the outcome, and was unhappy with the referee’s performance.

“I don’t understand how you can have a man sent off for denying a goal scoring opportunity, when they’ve had a free header from six yards and the keeper saved it. They had their opportunity and they missed it, so they haven’t been denied it,” he told the club’s official website.

“The mistakes that were made you don’t expect at this standard of football. In fact I’ve never even seen that happen in a Sunday League game. The rules might have changed between 7:45pm and 9:45pm, I don’t know.

“I saw an offside goal from a goal kick. I saw one of our players being wrestled to the ground when he had a chance to put a cross through to goal but the player didn’t get spoken to, and two minutes later he’s booked when he should have been sent off.

“Our players are absolutely seething with a sense of injustice. Our fans have had a lot of bad luck, we had a little bit of luck at home to Blackpool, but that’s the only luck we’ve had all season.

“I’m sure Hartlepool can’t believe the luck they got, getting a penalty and a sending off playing against 10 men.

“I see a 20-man brawl, and two players get yellow carded, both of them Accrington players. You never see that in football, but we saw it against Hartlepool.”

Stanley held the majority of the possession in the midweek clash, with the Reds missing a series of chances, only conceding to the home side after the contentious penalty, followed by a goal in injury time from Lewis Alessandra to secure the win for Hartlepool.

Despite the disappointment of Tuesday night’s fixture, John Coleman is now looking ahead to Saturday’s game against Yeovil Town, and will try to be forgetting about any problems his side faced against Hartlepool.

“I saw a lot of things that were wrong but as I said, I’m not the referee’s coach, I’m a football coach and I’ll concentrate on trying to get our players up for the game on Saturday,” he said.

“I know they are absolutely livid after the match against Hartlepool, so they shouldn’t need any motivation.”

The defeat leaves Accrington 18th, while this weekend’s opponents Yeovil are 12th.

“What I’ve got to look at is not what the referee did and I’ve got to look at how we played. We were the better team, I think even the most staunch Hartlepool fan would admit that,” he said. “You can’t legislate for those side influences so it’s pointless using your time on it. I can rant and rave about it, but it’ll be me that gets punished and I’ve made a vow to myself and to the club that

“I’m not going to get involved. My job is to try and motivate our players from the technical area not from the stands.”