Wrexham have moved up to second in the League One table but Stockport County have been left absolutely furious.
Phil Parkinson took his Wrexham side into battle once again on Saturday afternoon.
Wrexham beat Wycombe Wanderers 1-0 last weekend, providing a major boost to Parkinson’s promotion hopes.
Wrexham had to get the job done again on Saturday though having seen Wycombe beat Rotherham United in midweek.
A win over Stockport was needed with Wycombe not in action and we saw yet another 1-0 Wrexham victory.
Jay Rodriguez impressed Paul Merson with the only goal, scoring on the rebound after seeing his first-half penalty saved by Corey Addai.
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Stockport County boss fumes over Wrexham winner
Wrexham saw out the game against 10 men as Stockport defender Brad Hills picked up two yellow cards.
Stockport have been left absolutely furious over Saturday’s defeat – and it’s nothing to do with that red card.
Wrexham’s penalty was contentious to say the very least as Ibou Touray was penalised for handball.
Stockport’s argument is that Touray only committed a handball because he was pushed in the back by James McClean.
County boss Dave Challinor has offered his verdict, telling Stockport’s official YouTube channel that he can’t believe what he was seeing at the STōK Cae Ras.
Challinor admitted that he wouldn’t share his completely honest feelings out of fear of getting himself in trouble.
The County boss made it clear that he believes his side should have been given a free kick whilst suggesting that Stockport are up against really poor refereeing on a regular basis.
“I’m not going to get myself into trouble over it by saying probably what truly believe,” said Challinor.
“But if you’re going to get involved in situations, I’ve just spoken to the referee and the officials, although they don’t say much back… if you’re going to get involved in situations, my argument would be, ‘what have you seen?’, because you’ve got a flag. If you believe there’s a foul, everywhere else I’ve seen, you wave your flag.
“Now I’ve been told that they’re told not to do that anymore, you should talk to each other on comms. Regardless of that, it’s never been a penalty. It’s never been a penalty. There can be arguments, potentially for the decision before when Sam Smith goes down under pressure from Ethan Pye.
“There can be arguments there, now I’ve not seen that back closely, but that’s more of a penalty than that, that he’s given and for a linesman to get involved on the far side of the pitch and do nothing else in the game and cost us – not cost us three points, because we wasn’t good enough to score and didn’t create much opportunities, but to cost us a point and flip the momentum of the game in the first half is down to another really, really poor decision in my eyes, where we’re talking about not two teams that are playing football, we’re talking about a third team and it will continue to go on.
“It completely changed the momentum of the game, we’re totally on top and our performance in the first half, although it didn’t create lots of opportunities, was really controlled and really in the ascendancy. They didn’t lay a glove on us, you’d still argue they didn’t lay a glove on us, yet an official has got involved – if he sees and believes that it’s handball, then fine, but you need to see what happens in the lead-up to that, and if he goes, ‘it hits Ibou Touray on the arm,’ it’s not hit him on the arm where he thinks it has, but there’s a blatant foul, would you not ask yourself the question as to why he would be in the position that he’s in?
“It should be our free-kick, not a corner, not anything else, he’s given a penalty and unfortunately that’s what we’re up against,” he added.
Wrexham move on with big games to come
Wrexham won’t care all that much about Stockport’s complaints.
Parkinson’s side had received just one penalty in League One this season before that Stockport incident.
As Challinor noted, Wrexham should have had a penalty for a blatant pull on Sam Smith before the Touray handball incident.
Wrexham will just move on to the upcoming games, starting with Exeter City away next weekend.
Cambridge United and Burton Albion follow with Wrexham really needing to beat teams in the bottom half of the table to secure another promotion.