Stevenage boss Alex Revell criticised referee Marc Edwards for being too eager to give the stoppage-time penalty that denied his side a first away win since January as hosts Walsall rescued a 1-1 draw.

The visitors looked set to record back-to-back league victories for the first time since May 2019 after Aramide Oteh slammed home a penalty early in the second half.

But Scott Cuthbert was penalised for a foul on Josh Gordon at the death and the striker netted from the spot to earn draw specialists Walsall a point and push Stevenage into the bottom two.

“For me, it’s the first time I’ve really felt that frustration as a manager,” said Revell, who took over in February.

“We are disappointed with the penalty. Having just seen it again, I think his mind was already made up to give it so that’s disappointing.

“But if you go to ground in the box, unfortunately you are going to give him a decision to make.

“That is disappointing for us because, although they got crosses in the box, I thought we defended really well.

“I think in the first half we probably showed we’d had extra-time in the Cup on Sunday in our legs but once we grew into the game, and organised ourselves a bit better, we got stronger.

“When you work like that, you get your rewards and we are not far away. We’ve just got to keep drumming on the door and the goals will come and the results will take care of themselves.”

Gordon returned from two months out with a knee injury to earn Walsall a ninth draw in 15 games.

But boss Darrell Clarke was unhappy with a lack of cutting edge plus the poor backpass from Emmanuel Osadebe that led to keeper Jack Rose fouling Tom Pett for Stevenage’s spot-kick.

Clarke said: “The final ball, the final finish hasn’t been good enough this season and that’s why we’ve drawn too many games.

“We’ve got Josh coming back so hopefully we can freshen things up going forward and stop giving rubbish goals away.

“First half, we were dominant, we got in good areas and my head was facing one way for most of it but second half what do we do? We shoot ourselves in the foot and give another poor goal away.

“We’re getting into the right areas, we will be up on the stats – crosses, set-pieces, shots, entries into the final third. You can lead a horse to water but then you’ve got to find that bit of quality.

“We’ve chucked so many points away, even in these early stages of the season – we’ve lost three games, drew nine and only won three. It’s very frustrating because we’re better than that.”