Stoke City boss Alex Neil takes aim at referees and expects being handed a fine after his players’ melee with Southampton.
The frustrated manager watched on as players of both sides squared up to each other after the Championship clash of what was a controversially-refereed match at the bet365 Stadium.
It saw the Saints come away with a 1-0 victory after Stoke keeper Mark Travers had been pushed in his back to the floor by Southampton’s Carlos Alcaraz, who then, as per Stoke Sentinel, was posturing to Stoke’s Wouter Burger and surrounded by players and staff.
It was a game with plenty of tempers boiling over as can be seen in the clips below…
Tempers boil over at The Bet365 Stadium 😳 pic.twitter.com/SCRq7jlimL
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) October 3, 2023
Tempers continue to bubble over at the final whistle as Southampton beat Stoke 1-0 😤 pic.twitter.com/DdbjIIYYHm
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) October 3, 2023
Neil was questioned if he could shed any light on it all: “Not really. There seemed to be a bit of a coming together but I’ve just said the same thing to the referee: the hostility and the anger comes through the crowd because you’ve riled them up by continuously given decisions, from their perspective as a club, against us and you feel hard done by.
“What happens is, that frustrates the players, you can hear them all shouting onto the pitch. The players get a bit frustrated and one little stupid thing, somebody says something they shouldn’t say and the next minute, everybody is…
“What I said to the referee is that we’ll probably get sanctioned for that. We’ll probably get a fine – and in my opinion it’s because the game wasn’t managed properly. If it had been managed properly I don’t think that happens.
“I can’t remember being involved in an incident since I’ve been here where that’s happened after a game.
“I’m not blaming our defeat on the referee but the simple fact is that there’s one team’s performance, the opposition’s performance and the officials’ performance and each one of them will have a massive bearing on the game.”
PGMOL have told the Potters they should have been awarded five penalties which they didn’t get so far for the 2023/24 season with potentially another added to that after a decision against Southampton.
Alex Neil adds, as per Stoke Sentinel: “After every game, an incident report goes in from the referees and an independent panel will look at all the key moments and report back to you whether something should or shouldn’t have been a penalty or a free-kick, big decisions that were right or wrong. I don’t mean decisions all over the pitch, the key ones. In each game there’s maybe five incidents.
“I think we’ve played now, what, 10 league games and the PGMOL have come back to us – and that will be another one because I’ve watched it back and it’s a definite penalty, no doubt about it – and we’ve had five penalties that have not been given in our favour but should have been penalties based on their analysis looking back. That will definitely be six. To have six after 10 games really is a ridiculous number considering we’ve been given zero.”
Neil goes on, with Armstrong scoring his free kick, the only goal of the game: “Yes, like today when it was decided by one free-kick going into the top corner. If we end up getting the decisions we should have got… It will be really interesting if people look back at the Nathan one and say that it’s not a penalty because I’ll be absolutely astonished if that’s the case.”
Neil responded on referee James Bell awarding 17 free kicks for fouls to Southampton with two of given to Stoke: “That was the free-kick count? Wow – although that doesn’t surprise me. There were so many in the game…
“I just had a chat with the referee there, a calm conversation and I’m just saying to him, when you’re managing any match as a referee, in my opinion, you come away from the game not really noticing them because he’s managed it that well. You should go on unnoticed for me.
“There should be roughly split decisions across the pitch. You’re not going to get them all right but tut the easiest way to do it is to try divvy them out 50-50 across the match, particularly when there’s ones when you’re not quite sure who it is, which will happen. To say it ended 17 versus two doesn’t surprise me.
“I’d imagine that would be quite odd if you look at any game. That must be really odd.”
Alex Neil was proud of the efforts of the players as the Potters suffered a narrow home defeat to Southampton. pic.twitter.com/60CVWrLgDX
— Stoke City FC (@stokecity) October 3, 2023
Southampton’s Russell Martin:
“I think it’s been two of our best performances, tonight I think was probably our best one, our most complete one.
“I feel like we should have scored a couple more goals and we limited them to very little really, although they threw everything at us in the end.
“To follow up the effort it took on Saturday to come here and such a tough place, a good team with a really excellent manager, to come here and do what we did, I’m really proud of the boys.
“They’re playing for each other, they’re playing for us and the last two games will hopefully come at the end of the toughest moment we’ll have together.
“I think every team has a tough period and ours has come early on after a good start and playing against a really difficult fixture schedule.
“We found a bit of rhythm now and hopefully we can maintain that.”
Twitter users reacted as Stoke boss Alex Neil takes aim at referees and expects to be issued with a fine after his players’ melee with Southampton…
@Doh26: Ref still books a stoke player. One of the worst refereeing performances I’ve ever seen and for the championship that’s saying something.
@ScfcAli: Refs need sorting out
@FrostyFrosty_: Hardly a surprise after that shambolic performance from the ref. Lots of play-acting from Southampton and two blatant penalties not given to Stoke. An absolute embarrassment.
@baltipiesmugglr: All on the ref this, after one of the most bent performances I’ve ever seen. Questions need asking.
@NjpPrice: Bias referee he was absolutely woeful last night didn’t give us a thing.
@I_am_The_Mard: That’s what happens when the world can see the refs are corrupt and nobody does anything about it. Absolute disgrace of a referee.
@archie_gillen: if that referee hasn’t been sacked by the end of the week i’ll do a reffing course myself by a hi vis nike top and kaiser5s and show them the how to apply rules of the fucking game
@dunkscfc: This is the refs fault, avery weak man that couldn’t make a correct decision in the hole game and lost control of it.
@james_king_88: Always bound to happen when an inept referee loses control of the game
@Everystepalong: This is what happens when you have a ref who has lost complete control of the match
@Bonner_DJ: When you get a pathetic and shambolic show from the referee this is what you will end up getting. The @EFL gets worse week on week for standards of officiating.
@Saints_Mike7167: I love the way Sekou-Mara, is walk towards the melee, like he’s out for Sunday morning stroll with his dog. He’s probably, thinking I better go over there but that Wesley is a bit of a unit 🤣🤣#SaintsFC
@scott7edwards: Because the ref lost the game and made it all out him! JOKE
@mightystokies: Solely down to the ref this is
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