Scott Brown was furious with the decisive penalty and his Fleetwood side’s performance as they fell to defeat at Cambridge.

Sam Smith’s penalty proved to be the winner 12 minutes after half time and Brown expressed his dismay at referee Lee Swabey for pointing to the spot for a challenge on James Brophy.

Mark Bonner’s U’s have won successive League One matches for the first time since the start of September, reducing the gap between themselves and safety from seven points to three after seeing off the challenge of Brown’s side 2-1.

“It’s probably one of the worst refereeing performances I’ve seen in a long time, and the linesman as well,” Brown fumed.

“It’s about 10 yards away from both of them. How they can see that’s a penalty is incredible. The lad’s dived, but the referee has to be a little bit better.

“We can say the referee didn’t help us, but for me it’s not just about that referring decision. It’s about our overall performance. It was nowhere near good enough.

“It’s a mentality thing because we’re safe. They don’t really want to focus, do their jobs and take responsibility.

“Overall they probably deserved the win. They wanted it more. I know they’re in a relegation battle and we’re safe, but still that shouldn’t matter. We have to be bigger than that, we have to be better than that.

“Today from start to finish we were nowhere near good enough, not one person in that team will get pass marks. Come Monday it’ll be a totally different team, there will be a lot of changes.”

Mark Bonner knows what his Cambridge side need to do if they’re to avoid to drop out of League One.

“I think we need back-to-back wins a number of times before the end of the season to stay in the league, so we have to win these games,” he said.

“Home games are really important to us. If we show that we can win games when it really matters and we show that we can put back-to-back wins together that gives us confidence in the remaining seven games.

“I thought we were worthy of it; I thought we were excellent. It was a really, really good performance, a spirited performance but with a really good quality in there as well.

“There’s a group of players there that are playing like they understand the situation and are playing like they’re desperate to do well.

On the penalty incident, Bonner added “we’ve had enough go against us. I haven’t seen it. So if it wasn’t I couldn’t care less. We need a few going our way. We’re owed a few.

“But I thought we deserved the win, thoroughly.”