Saints had a few players back from injury and looked a more settled and balanced side, but a good performance was all undone by a lapse of concentration and two awful VAR decisions, but we march on.

I have always been an exponent of VAR, my reasoning is that it is better to use technology and make sure that the right decisions are made, but the game against Aston Villa last night exposed the flaws of the system and how it can actually be counter productive.

The first was the most controversial the ball clearly hitting Matty Cash's arm, the verdict from VAR was the ball had deflected off the Villa man's thigh and was therefore accidental, but it was clear that as the ball had come off his leg, Cash moved his arm to account for the change in direction of the ball.

How did the man operating VAR not see this and take it into account.

The second in injury time saw Danny Ings fire home a deserved equaliser, only for VAR to declare that his arm was offside, given that according to the rules the arm starts at roughly the shirt short sleeve level, there were millimetres in it.

They were two terrible decisions and to get one of them against you would be a travesty, but two in one game !

I am not using this as an excuse, Saints still had plenty of chances to win it, they dominated in all areas, it looked a better balanced team with the likes of Oriol Romeu, Nathan Redmond & Moussa Djenepo back in the squad and gave Ralph options off the bench.

The Austrian reshuffled the side pushing James Ward Prowse to right back and a midfield central duo of Romeu & Diallo, it worked well, JWP marshalled Grealish well and we controlled the game well, but we did lose something going forward without the creativity of Ward Prowse in his usual central position.

We should have been ahead in the first half, but went in at the break a goal down after a lapse in concentration saw Barkley head home unmarked on 41 minutes.

In the second half it was Saints who did all the threatening and should have had the ball in the net long before that late VAR fiasco.

Perhaps the best opportunity came six minutes from time when Villa stopped 3 attempts on target in literally seconds, firstly Jan Bednarek rising highest to Ward-Prowse's in-swinger. Villa keeper Martinez saved from point blank range, before Che Adams and then Jack Stephens seeing efforts blocked as the visitors struggled to clear.

This was clearly a game where luck wasn't on our side, we didn't play badly, we started to look a bit more like we did earlier in the season, but sometimes things just don't come off.

The plus points are that we saw Oriol Romeu back in the side and carrying on where he left off, we also had Djenepo back and the hope is that Vestergaard will return in the next two weeks.

WE are on a poor run, but we are now in better shape to get back to form, there is still a long way to go this season, we have a manager who is working to a long term plan, he knows that all teams have bad runs, but if you stay focused you come through them stronger on the other side.

Photo: Action Images

dirk_doone added 13:46 - Jan 31 I should add that if the officials had been competent, we'd now be congratulating the team on a hard-fought 3-1 victory against a good Villa side. So, less of the criticism of our players, please. If we are all seething now, imagine how hard tit must have been for them to cconcentrate when so many bad decisions were going against them. They did well to keep going the way they did.

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Saintaxidriver added 13:47 - Jan 31 Just going to comment on 2 things. VAR is a good thing but the way it is being implemented isn't. As regards handball it should simply be a judgement as to whether it was intentional or not and did it hit the aarm below the shoulder. Forget about the rest of the stupid complications they add which gives too many grey areas. So in this case it should have been a penalty. On the offside it should be determined by the position of the feet and not any other body parts. I would also say that the line on the screen is quite thick and could have been moved a little to the left or right with no discernable difference except it might have changed the decision. It needs a computer algorithm to determine it like the goaline decisions not the shaky hand of a ref. Make VAR simple and people will accept it more as opposed to what we have now which is a farce!

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Colburn added 13:58 - Jan 31 As some have also pointed out, there was no foul on the keeper and Mason blew the whistle before Romeu got to the keeper. There was an incident off the ball involving Villa in a game the last week or so where Grealish gave a little forearm to his opponent in the side of the head as the oppo was standing up. It was clear to see first time but when the TV showed the replays of the incident immediately afterwards, they cut the image a second before the forearm. It was so blatant and there was no red card VAR check, which was convenient for Villa and Grealish. Are those who believe that we didn't get the rub of the green yesterday confident that VAR will never be used in a corrupt manner.? Its seems like a cherry picking machine to me..

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sandywelsh added 14:06 - Jan 31 Robbed by VAR, but we have not looked the same since Vestergaard got injured. Once again last night their goal was the fault of Stephens being in the wrong place and not marking his man. Saints looked more of a threat after Adams came on and he needs to start on Tuesday.
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halftimeorange added 14:35 - Jan 31 Many excellent points made above. I agree that we have developed too many general faults, the worst being our shooting, which looks as though half the team don't practice and the other half don't want to pass when others are better placed. Second, how often do we give the ball away for no apparent reason, turning attack into a scramble for defence. Third, why do we often lose the ball immediately from a throw-in - I'll answer that - our receiving players are often static giving the thrower few options and fourth, the old chestnut, tip-tapping in and around the penalty area. That said, we can and do play some attractive football, often against stronger opposition but, last night, after Villa scored there was an air of inevitability about the result. Fifth, we rarely come back after conceding first. Second half goals seem beyond us.Best part of the night was Jankewitz coming on. I'd really like to see him start instead of Theo and that opportunity has now presented itself to Ralph.

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IanRC added 14:49 - Jan 31 I agree with Colburn, if the penalty event had occured for MU or L'pool does anyone doubt that Villa would have been down to 10 men ?. Mason and Dean penalised us for not being a 'big' team in their eyes. Unfortunately the PL is now full of these little cheats that give just enough advantage to the media darlings. A disgrace but there you are.
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I_would added 16:03 - Jan 31 One win in eight games. Our downturn has coincided with Vestergaard being injured and it seems it doesn't matter how Ralph shuffles the pack we still can't regain the good form we had. This is exactly how things panned out before Vestergaard started playing better and Ralph tried everyone including the tea lady in every position to try and win a game then. WE NEED TWO CB'S NOW (preferably with experience)

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wibbersda added 16:11 - Jan 31 Q. Is the Prem getting boring, now teams struggle to break down the opposition?
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Peterx added 17:04 - Jan 31 To me the problem was not VAR, it is the stupid sleeves being allowed to score rule as well as bad refereeing applying VAR on handball decisions. The reality is everyone knows that not giving a pen was a horrendous decision, it will hopefully mean these refs are not rated as highly going forward. VAR does protect us though from the big clubs getting favoured to some extent on the offline calls.

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VancouverSaint added 18:16 - Jan 31 Agree DirkDoone, the ball is in fact a long blur, a fussy elongated ball, indicating that it is not the spit second the ball left the boot. The previous frame or two is the correct one that should have been viewed. 100% agree on your second point, Romeu was standing there waiting for the ball to drop, their goalie dropped it. The Cash handball.....well what can you say. It was a deliberate attempt to stop the ball with his hand, regardless whether it scuffed thigh or not, he was attempting to prevent a goal regardless. That fact should have gone into the decision making. 3-1 win for sure.

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mattlegod added 21:11 - Jan 31 It all been said above so I'll limit this to two comments. 1. Can we please have Armstrong back on the right and Redmond on the left (particularly the Armstrong point). The side always looked more balanced when they played in those positions and we were scoring more. 2. When on the offense why oh why do we keep stopping when we reach the penalty area? Rather than getting some crosses in, we are allowing the opponent to regroup in the penalty are and then fail to get through them. Seen it so times now.

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AmericanSaint added 15:39 - Feb 1 So I know I am late to this party, but wanted to add two things. For me, forget the two VAR incidents as we can debate all day long. What irked me was (1) The Romeu incident. I watched that several times on playback and he does not jump, grab or even try to impede the goalie and then scores when he goalie fluffs the clear. As the ball goes in the net, VAR should have reviewed it and make the ref go look at it on the monitor. As a former goalie, this was goalie protecting BS. Martinez didn't even really try for the ball and got this call. Next (2), when Diallo goes down, RH should have brought in Valery and we could have resumed our normal posture in the midfield. This could have been massive in the rest of the second half which we dominated. Well that is all at the rest has been covered. P.S. - We need a new owner ASAP as Gao is useless and is the worst thing for our club. I said it before when many of you were happy to see our former owner sell to him. I warned you, he does not care a bit about the club and was using it to move money out of China. Now reality has hit us hard. In order for our team to really push for Europe, we need a owner who wants to win and doesn't look at the club solely as a business. This is a rich man/woman's game and unless you spend you will not go anywhere - look at Chelsea and Leicester who did that. Until this changes, we will always struggle to keep players and stay a mid-table team. That is the unfortunate hard truth. And before you bash me on this point, look at our recent loan of $76 at 9.5%, while Tots had a load of over $200M at 1% to cover COVID losses.

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stmichael added 18:51 - Feb 1 Agree with most of this. But JWP made an awful school boy error that led to the goal completely losing Grealish who once again was at the heart of everything they did. We simply have no clue against him and have no one like him to create. What a fantastic player...
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