TOWN boss Mark Cooper railed against the officials after his side were denied a late penalty in their 2-0 defeat at Sheffield United.

Two goals from Jamie Murphy, the second very late on, ended Swindon’s unbeaten run in 2015. Prior to Murphy’s double the Robins had wasted a number of decent chances to take the lead, a fact Cooper was reticent about.

Though it was Louis Reed’s late collision with Jordan Turnbull in the box that most aggrieved the County Ground chief.

With the game in added time at the end of the second half and Town 1-0 down, Turnbull was bundled over by the young Blade and Cooper ran on to the pitch to make his feelings known as referee David Coote waved away the appeal.

Most gallingly, United then broke and Murphy added his second to kill the contest once and for all.

Afterwards Cooper, though accepting his side should have scored long before the penalty incident, was clearly less than happy with Coote’s performance.

“The biggest thing for me is at the end it’s an absolute blatant penalty on Jordan Turnbull and I don’t know what the referee’s looking at. Then they go down the other end and kill the game,” Cooper told the media.

“(In the first half) Michael Higdon for them was told one more and you’re off. He committed three more fouls and didn’t go off and was subbed, cleverly, by Sheffield United.

“I spoke to the referee at half time and I said ‘we don’t want players to be sent off but if you say one more and you’re off then you’ve got to do it. He said ‘all he did was tread on him’. So it’s alright to tread on someone? It was an unbelievable performance from the officials today.

“You can’t have that many chances and create that many opportunities and not score, then expect to win the game. Frustrating is the word, on another day we could have been three or four up at half-time and we weren't.

“I said to the players ‘you can see what’s coming and make sure it doesn’t happen’. It did and full credit to Sheffield United, they’ve done a job on us and got a lot of help from external sources.”