ANGRY ALLEN IN REF FURY
MARTIN Allen blasted referee Darren England after he awarded a controversial goal and sent off goalkeeper Jamie Stephens in Barnet’s defeat at Portsmouth.
Pompey striker Conor Chaplin, 18, weighed in with a classy double, after Andy Yiadom had given the visitors a shock lead.
But Allen hit boiling point in a bad tempered game when ref England allowed Adam McGurk’s early second-half goal to stand after the linesman waved his flag for offside.
Attacker Kyle Bennett had wandered into an offside position but let the ball roll through to former Burton striker McGurk who finished well.
Allen’s mood was worsened when England inexplicably sent off Stephens for a second yellow card – the first for timewasting in the first half, the second for a foul on Bennett.
The former Pompey player raged: “The ref hasn’t done a good job from the first minute.
“There was a tackle on our fullback, two-footed, that took him out and it wasn’t even a yellow card, it was possibly a red.
“But here you have 16,000 people and you have to be a strong referee to cope and deal with this, you have to be fair.
“Little Barnet coming here, you’ve got to have a proper referee who can deal with this.
“It’s intimidating and imposing and you have to have a man in the middle who can make his own decisions, that don’t just fit this stadium and the crowd.
“My players gave everything, I’m very proud of them. I’m disappointed not to have got anything out of it and even in the 91st minute we had a chance to take it to 2-2.”
Barnet took the lead against the run of play, when Yiadom sidefooted into the bottom corner on 25 minutes, after patient build-up from the impressive Mauro Vilhete.
Chaplin should have grabbed his first of the afternoon in the 31st minute but blazed over from inside the box after Christian Burgess had his header cleared off the line. But the home-grown hero netted just six minutes later when he smashed across the face of goal.
He scored a second in injury time – after McGurk had nabbed his controversial 54th-minute goal and Stephens had been replaced between the sticks by 17-year-old debutant Kai McKenzie-Lyle – to add gloss to the result, which cata- pults Portsmouth into the top three.
Pompey are still unbeaten in the league this season but assistant manager Leam Richardson heaped the praise on his teenage wonder.
He said: “We’ve got a name already that we’re some unbeatable team in League Two, which I don’t know where it’s come from.
“It’s respect to the players and you see Martin Allen go away from his beliefs here, to take a frontman off and add in midfield.
“Conor’s Conor. I’ve only been here a short while and you can already see the lad loves football and scoring goals. He’s quality and has a good work ethic.”