With both sides sitting just above the relegation zone and in poor form, three points would have been a major step towards safety, but Blackburn dominated the second half and deserved the draw given to them by Junior Hoilett.

Captain Christopher Samba pulled a goal back four minutes into the second half and they finally got their equaliser three minutes into injury time when Richard Kingson failed to deal with a Paul Robinson free-kick and the excellent Hoilett headed in.

As well as criticising the penalty decision, Holloway felt Taylor-Fletcher should not have been penalised for the challenge on Martin Olsson that earned Blackburn the crucial free-kick.

He said: “I thought the referee had a bit of a stinker. Was that a penalty? I don’t think so. It was a great move but it bobbled off their defender then my centre-forward fell over. There was contact but he’d already had his shot. I thought it was a corner.

“But it shouldn’t be balanced out with more bad decisions at the end, and it was unfortunately. Was that a free-kick on the halfway line that led to that huge boot into our box?

“But I’d rather talk about what we tried to do this week. People were on about it’s a big game but we tried to play our football. We didn’t get affected, we still passed it. We got ourselves 2-0 up and it could have been four. I’m proud of my team.

“We’ve worked on getting a little bit more solid at the back. Unfortunately that last one the goalie came out for it but didn’t get a decent punch and it got knocked back into an unguarded goal.

“My centre-half’s fuming with him and my centre-forward’s absolutely spitting feathers because he thought it was nothing like a free-kick.”

Blackpool had the ball in the net four times in the first half, with Luke Varney having two efforts justifiably ruled out for offside, and Blackburn trudged off the pitch at half-time to a chorus of boos.

But Rovers boss Steve Kean used their bright start to the game as inspiration for the second-half fightback.

The Scot, who saw Olsson and Jason Roberts hit the woodwork prior to Hoilett’s leveller, said: “It’s a massive point.

“I said to the lads at half-time, ’It’s very easy for me to say we’re 2-0 down, we’ll change the shape of the team, change the personnel, but why don’t we go out and perform exactly like we did in the first part of the first half?’.

“Full credit to them, they did that, and after we scored the crowd got behind us and we had a really good go and dug something out of the game. I think we had 20 attempts on goal so I think we were well worth at least a point.”

It was the second time in as many games Rovers could consider themselves unfortunate with penalty decisions following a similar call in the 3-2 defeat at Fulham two weeks ago, but, unlike his counterpart, Kean could understand Webb’s point of view.

He added: “The last couple of games we’ve found ourselves we think on the wrong end of decisions that normally are not given. I can understand that Nelsen does get a little bit on the ball but then he does catch the player in the box.

“Howard said he had to make a call on it and, like the Fulham game, I respect the decision but I just hope there’s enough time in the season for us to get a couple of ones that are not normally given.”