Bradford City manager Mark Hughes reserves criticism for referee Martin Foy, not his players

Alex Gillead appeared to be pushed in the penalty area after 15 minutes but the referee, who later booked manager Hughes for impeding Kyle Knoyle at a throw-in, waved the Bantams' appeals away.

"The big negative on the night is the referee not giving a stonewall penalty," said Hughes. "For goodness sake, it's ridiculous really.

"It was very similar to the one Tyreeq had at Orient. If we score it becomes very difficult for the opposition.

"I've seen it again but he said he felt he'd slowed down to engage the contact. He slowed down because he was going to whack the ball into the back of the net. Defenders can't afford to make those sort of challenges in the box. There's no debate."

But generally Hughes was pleased with the way his side claimed a point on a night of few chances for either side.

"It’s not easy to come here,” argued Hughes. “You can see how they get results – they constantly shell balls into your box and hope to get a break.

"You start with a clean sheet and you make sure you don’t lose.

"As the game went on it was difficult to see any real clear-cut chances for either side so we had to make sure we protected what we had, which I thought we did quite comfortably.

"It's not the game we want to play, we want to get the ball down, pass and move and create chances but it was difficult to do that.”

"It’s difficult to combat but we did to good effect and when we could play we were always trying to make angles. The only thing was that we weren’t able to find the initial pass as well as we would have hoped but it's difficult sometimes when the game is like it is and the ball's constantly going from back to front.

"You just need to recognise when you've got a little bit more time than you think and there were occasions when we hurried things but that's just the nature of these games, I'm not going to criticse them too much because it's difficult to play in them.

"I felt we were the team who tried to get the ball down and be progressive. We got out a couple of times but towards the top end of the pitch we weren't able to create enough. You've got to credit the opposition."