Boss says his team haven't had the rub of the green of late to say the least.

Crewe Alexandra boss Steve Davis is hoping that refereeing decisions will begin to even themselves out after the club were dealt three controversial ones in three successive matches.  Despite his side defeating Crawley Town 1-0 on Saturday to end a run of nine matches without a win, Davis was annoyed that the result was overshadowed by the red card shown to his forward Vadaine Oliver for two bookable offences – the second for supposedly ‘diving’ in the penalty area.

On the back of having an Oliver acrobatic effort ruled out at Carlisle, just seconds after Adam Dugdale suffered a head injury after being head-butted in the back of his head and the Port Vale striker Tom Pope surviving a possible red card for an off-the-ball incident with Mark Ellis in the local derby, the Alex boss has felt his side have not had the rub of the green of late.

Steve told the club’s official web-site: “Referees have a tough job and there is a lot of pressure on them to get the key decisions right. When I think they have got some decisions wrong, I put a DVD together to illustrate where I think they can improve. I do that even when decisions go for us in a game that I think are wrong.

“I don’t know if it helps or they take too much notice but it is nice to get it off your chest a bit and analyse things.

“They say that over the season the decisions even themselves out. I am not sure about that and we are certainly behind when it comes to decisions going for us.

“We have felt hard done by in the last three games to say the least. We had an incident in the Port Vale game when one of their players could have been sent-off. I didn’t say a lot about it after the game and I didn’t want to focus on that but he has stayed on the pitch and set up the winning goal.

You can time it, I think the referee lets the play go on for about four seconds before he blows up. There were other head injuries in that game and he let the ball go dead before he stopped it.  “We could have been 1-0 up against ten men and it would have been harder for them. Then we had Vadaine’s goal disallowed at Carlisle.

“Then we had Vadaine’s red card on Saturday. If he has been adjudged to have elbowed their player and the referee has seen it, then it should have been a straight red card. He gave him a yellow and I've watched it back and it certainly isn't deliberate.

“The second one was ridiculous. Our player didn’t dive and I thought he was giving us a penalty or free-kick.

“What annoyed me even more that two Crawley players went down, one inside the box in the second half and he let them both off. Didn’t even bother speaking to them, there is no consistency.”