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.

Photo: Action Images

SaintPaulVW added 17:02 - Feb 4 Well at least it's a sensible decision on Bednarek. VAR needs to be put to bed for a few seasons. They've tried it, identified the faults and now they need to sit down and resolve those in a non live situation. Having rules and interpretations changing regularly throughout the season is making a mockery of what should be an aid to reaching a correct decision. Bring it back only when it's shown to be fit for purpose.

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ElijahK added 17:05 - Feb 4 Thank god for that!!! I mean if he wasn’t playing on Saturday then I think we’d of all known the score before the game even started seeing that we’d have stephens and some youth player as our two centre backs! Let’s just hope we can get something out of this Newcastle game was by the sounds of it a few players like Vestergaard, Walker-Peters, Romeu and such may be back for the FA cup game which now seeing that the leagues gone downhill for us, is the only thing we can go for anymore!

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mattlegod added 17:09 - Feb 4 Now time to change the rule that the penalty score as a result should be discounted and goal difference adjusted accordingly. (Let alone the two that followed that!)
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dirk_doone added 17:12 - Feb 4 We all knew what Mike Dean was going to do in this game. He should not be allowed to continue his personal vendetta against Southampton.any more. Hopefully, Mark Clattenburg is right: https://saintsmarching.com/2021/02/04/southampton-mike-dean-may-temporarily-remo
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codge added 17:52 - Feb 4 Finally a decision l can agree with.👍👍👍👍
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AmericanSaint added 17:59 - Feb 4 Some good news for once and it is sad that we are having to celebrate the right call when it was there for Mike Dean all along. All he had to do was watch the replay from the midfield angle and it was so obvious. What I am curios about is that the reports of us asking for these two clowns not to ref us again for a while seems to be untrue and if that is the case, where we told not to put in the request and the card would be over turned.

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mancuniansaint added 18:28 - Feb 4 So was the red card rescinded completely or was it downgraded to yellow? Because if a penalty was the correct decision (i.e. JB committed a foul), he either attempted to play the ball or he didn't. If it was the first of these, he should be getting a yellow, if the second of these he gets a red. if the FA has deleted the card completely, it therefore implies there was no foul and the penalty was a wrong decision - which raises the question....Will Martial's dive be reviewed by the FA, given that no action was taken by the referee at the time and he presumably didn't record it in his match report?

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WestSussexSaint added 19:24 - Feb 4 Mancuiniansaint, I think we all know that the penalty was the WRONG decision and as a result Bednarek was not guilty of a foul and shouldn’t have been red carded. Thankfully the FA have come to the correct conclusion on that front. Sadly they have no power to sanction Martial as even if Dean didn’t see the dive the offence is only punishable by a yellow card The FA can only take retrospective action on red card offences if not seen by the ref. I don’t think the FA can take action against Mike Dean but the professional referees body should. Dean not only got the Bednarek decision wrong but did not waste any time pointing to the spot earlier in the match when Ramsey made the foul outside the box. Something that VAR correctly ruled on and overturned Deans position. At least Mike Dean should be temporarily stood down from referring at top flight match for a period of time. I would be surprised if any action is taken though as the refs union will close rank as they do when they rule on VAR decisions.

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SanMarco added 19:25 - Feb 4 Excellent news and I have to say rather unexpected. Lee Mason is indeed a very poor official but he was the fourth official on Tuesday. The VAR man was Graham Scott, whoever he is (there might have been a weatherman in the 60s called that but I don't think this was him). Mike Dean has, at least, been taken down a peg or two by this. For me VAR needs simplifying. Get rid of the lines (a quick look tells you all you need to know), have independent referees not connected to the people on the pitch and get a handball rule that works (only the last one is difficult). I am suddenly feeling slightly more confident about Saturday...

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Bettwsresident added 20:14 - Feb 4 Agree about VAR and offside, if it looks level, it is level, no need for the lines give benefit of doubt to the attacker. They can learn from cricket, pick up the howlers. Also the rules need to change re handball. If it bounces off your body onto an outstretched arm, fair no handball, if it marginally deflects and hits an arm it woudl have hit without the defection that is handball. Happy if this goes against us. I would rather this than the indeterminal wait we have now.

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NewburySaint added 20:46 - Feb 4 So does that mean the awful, cheating, Martial will get cited for diving....I think we know the answer to that 1. And rest assured if ‘owt is done about Dean & Mason the wider world won’t here about it, not that I expect our awful officials to ever be criticised!
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underweststand added 09:48 - Feb 5 Justice at last, but it had to go to arbitration to get a proper judgement. I may be wrong BUT ..wasn't there a compulsory rule some years ago that top referees were forced to retired at 45 ...(and then often got the FA Cup Final as their final game?.) If so referee Dean is already past 50 ..so what the deal and why is he still around ? One thing that Dean is top of .. is the table of red card sending-offs. The last stats. I read showed he has sent off almost twice as many players as the" average ref. " does and that he averages.... 4 yellow cards per game. (!) What is it he sees in games that other refs. miss ?. His enthusiasm in "carding players" is beginning to resemble a Hitler salute, what is he trying to prove?. For decades past I've heard /and learned that the best referees are often " invisible " and don't interfere unless absolutely necessary, but anyone watching a Dean game can see he wants to be " the centre of attraction " and continually interrupts the play rather than allowing it to flow. We can only hope that we can avoid him in future games - or is that expecting too much from the Prem. administrators?

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