Angry Bradford City boss Graham Alexander's '100 per cent' penalty frustration plus Cardiff City rival on settling a score

Trailing 2-0 after Cardiff crowned an excellent first 35 minutes with goals from David Turnbull and Chambers, referee David Rock ignored huge appeals for a spot-kick just before the break when Antoni Sarcevic went down under pressure from Chambers.

City dusted themselves down and after being second best for much of the opening half, they were much more like their true selves in the second half and pulled one back just before the hour with Jenson Metcalfe’s second cracking goal in successive home games – and almost a carbon copy to his effort against Port Vale.

But despite pressure, the hosts couldn’t force a leveller.

Afterwards, Alexander remained angered by the non-award of the penalty.

He said: "That non-penalty that should have been given before half-time would have put more pressure on them for the whole of the second half, which we got through Jenson's goal, but it should have been an equaliser. "It's 100 per cent, a penalty. I don't see how it cannot be given, to be honest.

"I watched it at half-time and again - just to clarify before I come to speak (to the press).

"But when I'm seeing things go with normal contact unpunished in the middle of the pitch and stuff like that, when it's just a break-down of tempo, and then you don't give something like that…

"When managers talk about consistency, it's not consistency between referees because obviously people are different and interpret things differently.

"It's when you get the same referee and once he's set the bar after 15 to 20 minutes of what is a foul and what isn't, and then the swingometer goes from one end to the other, it's when it gets frustrating for me and for other managers. It's that inconsistency with it in the game and it was a nailed-on penalty.

"If he's not giving that anywhere else on the pitch, then we might as well go and get our trucks on and just start wrestling each other. It was a blatant penalty and we've seen that before here, haven't we..”

On his side’s loss, he continued: "Obviously we've been on the wrong end of a one-goal margin, but I thought in the second half especially, we were the team in the ascendancy and in control and were the more dominant team.

"I thought we'd started the first half like that, but there was a couple of moments where we'd just gone off ourselves and I thought we'd given them too much time on the ball for their first goal in the build-up to it.

"The finish (first goal) is something that is very difficult to stop because it's a top-quality finish, as we saw from Jenson's goal.

"But the actual build-up, from our perspective, there's a couple of real basic errors from us in our organisation, which when we see the goal back on Monday with the players.

"I won't have to say anything, the players will see it themselves and they'll hold their hands up because they know how we work. "I've never seen this team go under, but you've got to take into account the quality of the opponent when they're in confident mood and who wouldn't be confident when you're two up away from home at what's proved to be such a hard place for anybody to win. I think the second goal is disappointing as well.

"It's a set-piece where we've just made a couple of mistakes and I just thought for a 10-15 minute period, we started doing things a little bit differently to what we do week in, week out.”

Offering his take, Cardiff City boss Brian Barry-Murphy said: "We’re over the moon to win at this stadium. Bradford have to be taken very seriously.

"We were good in the first half and I was very pleased. But when Bradford scored in the second half, we had to defend our box with our lives.

"They have a very good manager doing a very good job and to deal with them in this stadium was a credit to us.

"We had to show we could compete in Bradford because we weren’t good enough against them at home.”