SOUTHEND United manager Chris Powell felt Coventry City’s winning goal should not have stood at the Ricoh Arena on Saturday.

Jordy Hiwula’s well-worked goal, nine minutes into the second half. saw the Shrimpers suffer a 1-0 defeat against the Sky Blues.

But Powell thought the goal should have been disallowed.

“The goal is an offside goal and it’s a quite straight forward decision,” said the Blues boss.

“It’s not the player who scores, it’s the one just behind Tim Dieng who receives the ball in the build up and then that leads to their goal.

“I have to say the referee and the assistant were pretty good overall but they’ve missed that one.

“And it’s frustrating because we should have taken something from the game and there’s no way they should have taken the three points.

“Our performance warranted more.”

Blues now sit 12th in the League One standings but Powell felt his team’s performance improved the longer the game went off.

“We grew as the game went on,” said Powell.

“We got stronger and stronger and had the better of the chances but you have to take them.

“Their efforts and applications were very good and the performance got stronger but we go again in three days for a huge game with Gillingham.”

But Blues will head into the game on the back of a defeat, despite Powell adopting a more attacking formation in the closing stages at Coventry.

“We tried to get at them and we went very attack minded,” said Powell.

“We ended up putting Stephen McLaughlin at left-back to get an attacking thrust and we certainly got that.

“Young Isaac (Hutchinson) acquitted himself well and he’s getting closer which is good.

“He’s someone I have a lot of time for but I want to be taking something from this game.

“Simon Cox had an opportunity and so did Harry Bunn near the end but we couldn’t get the equaliser so we’re back to being consistent in our inconsistency again.”

The Shrimpers will now be bidding to bounce back against Gillingham tomorrow.

But Powell does not expect goalkeeper Mark Oxley to be back in action.

“I doubt Mark will be in contention for the Gillingham game.” said the 49-year-old.

“He hasn’t trained and it’s going to be a bit of a slow one with him.

“But we have young Bish (Nathan Bishop) and Ted (Smith) is getting fitter all the time too.”