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Leicester City’s Wilfred Ndidi tops the celebration pile after his side won their shootout 6-5 against Southampton.
Leicester City’s Wilfred Ndidi tops the celebration pile after his side won their shootout 6-5 against Southampton. Photograph: Craig Brough/Action Images via Reuters
Leicester City’s Wilfred Ndidi tops the celebration pile after his side won their shootout 6-5 against Southampton. Photograph: Craig Brough/Action Images via Reuters

Leicester prevail on penalties as Southampton rue controversial VAR call

This article is more than 5 years old

Be careful what you wish for. A few weeks after Southampton complained about the absence of VAR in the Premier League, Mark Hughes’s players were on the wrong end of a controversial decision via that very technology. Steven Davis thought he had scored a late winner for the visitors when he swept home in the 82nd minute, but Southampton’s celebrations were cut short after VAR intervened and judged Nathan Redmond had used an arm to control the ball in the lead-up.

There was a lengthy delay between Davis scoring – Roger East, the referee, had initially allowed the substitute’s strike to stand – and the goal being disallowed, which suggested there must have been an element of doubt about Redmond’s actions. The ball clearly struck the Southampton forward on the arm as he darted into the Leicester penalty area but the contact appeared unintentional and unavoidable.

Southampton had already hit the woodwork through Redmond and squandered a wonderful chance seconds later when Michael Obafemi, who was making his first start, filed a contender for miss of the season. After Danny Ward tipped Manolo Gabbiadini’s free-kick on to the bar with almost the last kick of the game Hughes said he sensed it was “not going to be our night”.

The penalty shootout confirmed his fears. After the first five players for both teams scored Gabbiadini saw his kick saved by Ward, who was also Leicester’s hero in the previous round when they beat Wolverhampton Wanderers on penalties. Nampalys Mendy stepped forward to confidently dispatch his penalty to set up a quarter-final tie at home against Manchester City next month.

Roger East consults VAR after Steven Davis’s goal for Southampton. The decision to award the goal was overturned. Photograph: Plumb Images/Leicester City via Getty Images

Hughes, who is under growing pressure after winning only one league game all season, was bitterly disappointed with the outcome. “I’ve said for a long time I’m an advocate of VAR – I think they [referees] need help,” the Southampton manager said. “In recent weeks we’ve demanded that it’s introduced immediately. So we can’t complain too much.

“I think sometimes what you’ve got to be careful with when you are looking at incidents in games is that if you slow it down to the nth degree, then something that happened in normal time looks like it’s deliberate. And clearly it’s not. When you play it in normal time, and Nathan’s run through at pace, there’s no way he can avoid that ball. If a defender was in the box and somebody hit the ball straight at him from that distance, it wouldn’t be given as a penalty because it would be too close. So why that’s been given I don’t know. From our point of view it’s a valid goal, it should have stood, we should have won the tie.”

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Hughes, who was fairly measured with his thoughts, added: “I think Anthony Taylor was [the VAR]. We feel he got a decision wrong at St Mary’s when he gave a soft penalty at the end of the game against Brighton, when we should have won. So he got that decision wrong and he’s got tonight’s decision wrong in my view.”

Claude Puel, who made nine changes to his Leicester side, could certainly count himself fortunate to be through to the last eight. Leicester created little going forward and rode their luck at the other end, no more so than when the 18-year-old Obafemi missed an open goal from four yards out. Thereafter it was all about Ward.

“The quality of our goalie kept us in the game,” Puel said. “He made fantastic saves.”

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