PHIL Parkinson is calling for officials to work together in teams to improve the standard of lower-league refereeing.

The City boss admits he is still "absolutely livid" that his side were not awarded a late penalty at Swindon after Ben Gladwin blocked a cross with his arm.

City have not been given a spot-kick since September and Parkinson reckons his side are being frequently short-changed by referees.

But he also has plenty of sympathy for the men in the middle and insists more must be done to make their job easier.

Parkinson suggests that referees should be assigned their own assistants and fourth official to work as a group throughout the season.

He said: "The refs at this level are all honest people. I talk to them afterwards and we have a good relationship – but they just need more help.

"I don't understand how they can't work in teams and their own units so they can build that familiarity with the other officials.

"When we played Port Vale the other week, the ref told me that before kick-off was the first time he had met the linesmen. That also happened to us before this season at Rochdale.

"How can you communicate and hope to produce a good working relationship over 90 minutes when you've never met before?

"We are asking referees and officials to work together when they've no idea about how the others like to operate. They don't know what the ref wants, his style or when to intervene.

"You need that familiarity to build up an understanding. It's the same as a back four playing together over time and learning their positional sense and how each other will react in a certain situation.

"As much as I'm frustrated by decisions at times, I'm on their side. These guys aren't getting enough support.

"They are working all week then turning up at night and expected to do their job well with a group of people they have never met. It makes no sense to me."

Parkinson believes that not enough money is filtering down from the Premier League to raise officiating standards in Leagues One and Two. A team system, he says, could be installed by the refereeing authority during the summer.

He said: "It's laziness on their part. There has got to be better organisation put in place.

"The Premier League is awash with money now and they probably don't get anywhere near enough coming down. They probably don't get the funding for training they want.

"But it just seems common sense to me to have the same officials working together from the start of the season. I'm absolutely convinced that if they did that, the standard would improve."

Parkinson pinpointed three flashpoints from the midweek defeat when City had strong claims for a penalty. His post-match comments questioned whether the team's reaction was "too honest".

He said: "We've had so many handball incidents. We look at them all afterwards and it's just ridiculous.

"I can't understand why we don't get them. Perhaps we aren't appealing enough or making a big enough thing about it at the time.

"You see some of the penalties that are being awarded on TV and then we don't get one for what happened the other night.

"But what can you do when the linesman tells you after the game that it was handball but his feet were on the line – so why not give a free-kick then?

"He's ten yards away. But that's why the top linesmen and refs are at the top level.

"It was a big decision and I would love to know what the assessor wrote on his report.

"But that was only one of three (penalty appeals). Andy Halliday should have gone down when he cut inside but stayed on his feet.

"It's a big thing in the game about staying on your feet and being honest. We try to adhere to that and we get punished for it."