Stevenage manager Alex Revell pointed at big moments as the reason his side fell to a 1-0 League One loss at home to Lincoln.
Jack Moylan scored a winning penalty after 72 minutes, seven minutes after the hosts were denied a spot-kick of their own by an unsighted referee.
And there was a big miss in the first half by Tyreece Simpson that came back to haunt them.
Revell said: “The stats show it, two shots on our goal and their only one on target being a penalty.
“But on the flip side – and talking about big moments – we had a big moment in the first half that we have to take.
“And we have to be honest, if we take it then the game becomes very different.”
As for the two penalties, Revell felt they both should have been given.
He said: “We’ve talked a lot about (taking) chances. You can’t rely on clean sheets because that’s football, you get punished.
“But if you dive in and stick a leg in, you give the referee an opportunity to make a decision and that’s what’s happened.
“You don’t need to make (the challenge) but then without a shadow of a doubt, it’s a stonewall penalty for us.
“I’ve seen it five times now and that’s the difference in football, six minutes later we give away the penalty and they win.”
Lincoln ended with 10 men as Paudie O’Connor was dismissed in stoppage time for two yellow cards.
Boss Michael Skubala was full of praise for the way his side stood up against Stevenage’s physicality.
He said: “It was an attritional game. There wasn’t much there if you like pretty football, but we knew what it was going to be like.
“We had to stand up to it and I thought first half, with the wind against us, it made it a little bit harder.
“It wasn’t a great game of football, but you have to win those and I’m really proud of the group to come away and get three points.
“They’ll take points off a lot of teams here. They’re strong here, they have an identity of their way of playing. It’s really hard to play against and they do things well.
“We dug in. Maybe we needed a little bit more quality when it did settle but that’s just because we spent so much time with the ball in the air going over us.
“We’re a young group but we’re not going to be bullied. We respect everyone but we won’t fear anything and if people want to bully us, we’ll fight back.
“When we came here last year, we got beat up a little bit. I didn’t feel that today, I just thought the game was poor from a football sense.”
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