On Tuesday evening Southampton made the trip to the King Power Stadium for the postponed EFL Cup clash with Leicester City following the tragic accident earlier this season in the helicopter crash that claimed the life of their owner and four others.
With spiralling Premier League form and growing speculation about manager Mark Hughes’ own job, like every game it was an effective must win to ease pressure even if the league campaign is again everything.
Credit where it’s due though, it was a solid if not spectacular performance from the first team and in a poor game, we had the better chances on the day – but again couldn’t find the goal.
The match went to penalties and we lost 6-5 as Manolo Gabbiadini’s effort was well saved by goalkeeper Danny Ward.
With a number of things to discuss at the fulltime whistle, Hughes focused in on the Video Assistant Referee technology as he felt that, far from being a potential Watford saviour, he felt it had cost us on the night as Steven Davis saw a late winner denied owing to a handball by Nathan Redmond and he told Sky Sports.
“We’ve had a perfectly good goal chalked off by VAR. It doesn’t matter if it’s judged by video or by the referee. The referee, in fairness to him, actually said if it wasn’t for VAR, he would have given it because it happened so quickly. I’m an advocate of VAR, I have to say, but sometimes when you slow things down, deliberate handball looks a little bit more easy to spot.”
Hughes went on to say that with our previous complaints we couldn’t complain too hard but he warned if you watch multiple replays and slow mo’s ‘something that is not deliberate in real time then looks deliberate when it is not’.
Whether Hughes has a point or not – at time of typing I’ve not seen highlights – he’s now in the trap of finding excuses for everything and that just tells the true picture of where we find ourselves.
