Saints V Watford The Verdict Sunday, 11th Nov 2018 11:15 Saints were robbed of a much needed win by inept refereeing after a lot of hard work was destroyed by a late offside flag that was wrong. The headlines should have been all about Saints finally winning at St Mary's but due to the refereeing of Simon Hooper it was all about the ref not a superb winning goal by Charlie Austin. Hooper was poor all afternoon before the disallowed goal, he constantly was in the wrong decisions and got in the way of play, a football fan can go years without seeing a referee hit by the ball in a match, Hooper was hit twice at St Mary's and this perhaps tells you a little bit about the way he handled the game, he was out of his depth, he also booked three Saints players for fairly innocuous tackles and Watford had cause to question his ability when he denied them what looked and turned out to be on replays a stonewall penalty. But two wrongs don't make a right as Saints fans found out when after a great run and pass by Nathan Redmond, Charlie Austin swept the ball home to make it 2-0, only it turned out he didn't, initially the flag didn't go up, indeed Austin, not known for his pace was over by the Saints bench being mobbed by his team mates before the goal was disallowed. Replays showed that yes Yoshida was stood in an offside position but he was not affecting play nor in the sightlines of the keeper, the linesman would have been right to bring the fact that Yoshida was offside to the referee's attention as he could not tell whether he was impeding the keeper or not, but it was the referee who then had to make the call and he called wrongly. This would have put us two goals up surely on our way to victory at this stage, but instead it then became the usual story of a lapse in concentration and an equaliser that took a big deflection to wrong foot Alex McCarthy. Indeed Hooper also played his part in this goal, pulling up James Ward Prowse for a foul on the edge of the Watford penalty box for no apparent reason and the visitors took the free kick quickly and went straight up and scored. This completely burst the bubble, up to then the crowd was starting to believe we could win the game, the players were looking more confident and strong, but the crowd went flat, the team went flat and in the end I was glad to hear the final whistle. The big question now though is whether Mark Hughes will still be in charge in a fortnight when Saints return after the International break in a game that will see them definitely in the bottom three should they lose. Those supporting Hughes will point to the fact that although we haven't won we have drawn three out of the last four and in that fourth game it was against Manchester City away, possibly the toughest game in European Football at present let alone the Premier League. They will point to three decent performances that could easily have been another four points on the board, points that would have seen us in 13th place, they would also point out that Bournemouth and Watford are 6th and 7th, the best of the rest so to speak and no push overs. But on the other hand we now sit 1 place above the bottom 3, yes Saints did seem to have something yesterday that they had been lacking, but that still wasn't enough, was this more about the players own pride kicking in than Hughes tactics. Certainly although Hughes changed things his selections were puzzling, even on the bench why on earth did we again have two central defenders, surely that is not needed, Hughes had bigged up Olafemi in the days leading to the game, surely when Watford equalised in the 82nd minute that was the time to bring him on to up the tempo and give the team and crowd a lift, but Hughes did nothing, he sat back and watched not bringing the youngster on till the 90th minute just as 4 minutes of injury time was being announced. This perhaps tells the story of the season, we are not a bad side but we play without the tempo of the likes of Bournemouth and Watford, they are no better than us, but they up that tempo when they need to, we don't and some of that has to be down to the manager. I was hoping that the departures in the back room at St Mary's this week would show that the board has it's finger on the pulse, I was hoping that no other departures would be needed, that this would give the team impetus, give the fans hope and that Mark Hughes would step up to the plate, sadly I don't think he did. We have a team without leadership that has to come from the manager, there has been scant evidence of that this season, if we do the same things we will get the same results, perhaps one more change is needed. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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