NIGEL Clough said the defeat to Portsmouth was hard to take after an injury time winner that should have been flagged for both offside and handball was allowed to stand.
The Brewers had the best of the play for long spells and when Liam Boyce grabbed a second half equaliser looked good to go on and get a fourth home win on the bounce until that cruel last minute blow.
The Brewers manager said: “We played extremely well again today against one of the top teams in the league with vastly greater resources than ourselves and at times we played them off the park.
“If they come up with a bit of quality in the last minute and put one in the top corner we hold our hands up, but when you lose that way it’s much harder to take.
“We are very pleased with our performance today. We deserve to be higher than we are and challenging for the top six but fortunately football is not always fair. It wasn’t today and hasn’t been for a lot of the times this season.
“We played well in the first half but were behind to a very good strike. There was not much we can do about that. We had situations in the first half but the front three didn’t quite gives us the quality we needed. The first good cross we put in in the second half we scored from. That’s where Liam Boyce should be, inside the six-yard box and it was a good finish.
“Then it was all us going forward and I thought we played a lot of good football today.
“We were without Jake Buxton and Brad Collins but those who have come in acquitted themselves well. Kieran Wallace looked comfortable; Stephen Bywater did well. It’s hard to come in like that when you haven’t played for a long time. He has done his job and not cost us anything today.”