Vanarama National League north: Gloucester City 1 Bradford Park Avenue 0

AVENUE boss Mark Bower was left extremely disappointed after his side lost a game they deserved to win.

It was Gloucester City ’s first victory in four league games and it lifted them one place in the table to seventh, but they were mightily relieved at the final whistle as they had been second best from the opening quarter-hour.

The fact that they were the better side and had what looked like a perfectly legitimate goal ruled out for offside will be of little comfort to Park Avenue when they look at their meagre tally in the points column.

Bower’s Avenue are still bottom of the table and still seeking their first victory of the season.

The only crumb of comfort after Saturday’s controversial defeat was that they are still only nine points from safety as the bottom four clubs all lost - in fact none of the bottom seven clubs won.

There was a third Avenue debut for goalkeeper Jon Worsnop after he came back to his home town.

But his homecoming did not get off to the best of starts as he was beaten in the seventh minute by a free-kick from the Tigers’ Joe Hanks.

Worsnop was not as fault and the keeper, signed from Chester on Friday, proved that his confidence had not suffered from that early setback as he made a superb save to deny the home side’s Sam Avery in the 12th minute, tipping a looping header away.

Avenue soon settled at Wadden Road and began to press, with home keeper Jasbir Singh forced into action early on.

He raced out of his area to meet a through ball that Emile Sinclair looked favourite to collect and cleared it for a throw-in with a diving header – much to the delight of the home supporters.

The visitors worked patiently and built up some momentum, and they had a particularly good spell from the half-hour mark to the interval.

A Shane Killock header following a free kick was deflected wide, another effort from the centre back was blocked, and Nicky Boshell and Sinclair were both foiled by Singh.

Avenue thought they had levelled a minute before the break when Killock headed in Boshell’s excellent delivery, but when he realised the flag had been raised, Killock was not at all happy.

There was still time for Chris Sharp to send in a volley before the interval but Singh saved.

The visitors were creating chances throughout the second half, and Adam Nowakowski put a looping effort just over after Singh had lost the flight of cross before the home keeper saved a Sinclair shot with his feet.

The home side held on, and the Tigers’ official Twitter feed described the disallowed goal as controversial and acknowledged the sporting reaction from their fans as they applauded the Avenue supporters and admitted that they didn’t know how they had won the game.