Ray Crawford has questioned whether Paul Cook should have substituted Michael Doyle and Christian Burgess over their half-time bust-up.

The Blues lost 2-1 to Stevenage after the skipper and centre-half were hauled off for coming to blows in the changing room.

Former Pompey and Ipswich star Crawford told The News: 'In football, the result is more important than two players having a squabble and a punch at each other. On Saturday, the manager could have dealt with it whichever way he wanted to.

'It wouldn’t have come out like it has now if he had dealt with it better. It was handled wrongly. He should have kept it in-house and said to everybody who was in that room: ‘If this gets out I will know where it has come from. It has come from you lot and you will all be fined — this is a personal matter for the club to sort out’.

'Why should you take two of your best players off? One is the captain and the other is possibly the best centre-half in the league. You can’t say we are not going to play them for a couple of games — we need them. And against Stevenage, we needed those players on the park — they are two of the best we have got.

' Cook sacrificed three points for the sake of two lads who have shown some passion. I just can’t understand why he has done that. Were both of the players injured at half-time — why were they taken off?

Obviously, they are both upset and emotions are high — they probably thought they should have been winning at half-time. I am not defending them here, they let themselves, their team-mates and fans down. But what Cook should have done was say to them: ‘Monday morning, 10 o’clock — two pairs of boxing gloves — get in the ring and sort it out if you still want to.'

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