Sometimes in football you are on the end of bad decisions, usually the name Mike Dean is in there somewhere, Saints have been on the end of a few of his poor refereeing gaffes in the last week, but there is one good bit of news.
The FA have overturned Jan Bednarek's Manchester United red card, meaning he is eligible to feature against Newcastle on Saturday.
The Saints defender was shown a straight red card late on against United at Old Trafford, this cost Saints dearly as down to 9 men United stepped up a gear and scored 3 times in the last few minutes
That had also left the Bednarek suspended and unavailable for Saints' upcoming Saturday game against Newcastle United- but now the decision has been overturned, a decision that could be crucial to our chances of getting a result given that we have such a big injury list.
A statement released by the FA reads:
"Jan Bednarek will be available for Southampton FC’s next fixture after an independent Regulatory Commission upheld a claim of wrongful dismissal and removed his suspension."
That is fine, but it should not gloss over the fact that Mike Dean and Lee Mason got things badly wrong on Tuesday evening, the FA Panel overturning the decision must mean they agree with Saints supporters and most of the TV pundits and media that there was absolutely no contact made by Bednarek and that he had pulled out of the challenge.
I could see that after watching about 30 seconds of the footage, yet Lee Mason VA could not make up his mind and neither had Dean when the VAR screen appeared to freeze on a long distance shot of the incident leaving him with no conclusive evidence.
Yet he still chose to award the penalty and send Bednarek off, why would he have done that, after all at 6-0 up in the closing stages, to rescind the penalty or even give it and leave Bednarek on the pitch would not have altered the result.
But in his own bizarre way, he has to make the incident all about him.
For me this does not show that VAR is a farce, it shows that it is all about the men who look at it and give the decisions, too much is being made of getting it exactly right to the millimetre, if it cannot be judged quickly and with certainty then a decision can't be given.
But there is still the question of the integrity of both Mike Dean and Lee Mason, many Saints supporters and indeed fans of other clubs have called Mike Dean's judgement into question, at best he is incompetent at the job, at worst he has an agenda against certain clubs and players, over the years in English football I have seen many bad referee's, but I can't remember any that I have felt have actually let their own feelings come into things, they have just been bad.
With Dean this time there is no excuse, he has got a decision badly wrong even after looking at it on TV and with the so called help of another ref.
If the Football Association investigated Mike Dean, you would not find too many football fans have an argument against action being taken, that is a sad thing to say about someone who should be seen as a neutral, I can take bad refereeing and all refs make a mistake at some time, what i cant take is when they get it wrong even when TV evidence suggests they are making an error.