Thursday 6 April 2017 00:22, UK
Crystal Palace manager Sam Allardyce accused the referee's assistant of "gifting" Southampton their equaliser in his side's 3-1 loss at St Mary's on Wednesday night.
The visitors had appeared on course to go in 1-0 up at the break after Christian Benteke had opened the scoring on 31 minutes with his fifth goal in his last five Premier League games against the Saints.
However, Southampton levelled matters in the final minute of the half in controversial circumstances after James Ward-Prowse had appeared to foul Wilfried Zaha on the right-hand touchline, before crossing for Nathan Redmond to score at the far post.
Referee Roger East, though, allowed the forward's effort to stand and instead of going in ahead at the break, the course of the match was turned on its head.
"I asked the players tonight not to waste Saturday's result here tonight, get a point, stay undefeated and try and win it if you can," said Allardyce.
"And certainly going 1-0 up with a wonderful goal today should have settled us down, but unfortunately it did not really.
"And then of course we should have been going in 1-0 up at half-time. But the assistant referee has gifted Southampton a goal by the fact that he has not been able to see a blatant foul on Wilfried two yards away from where he is on the touchline and tries to tell us it was not a foul.
"If that is not a foul, then I am not a manager and have not been a manager for 20-odd years, but there you go.
"So for us to lose a goal at that stage and give them a lift at half-time, when it should have been 1-0 to us, and we did not play our best as we have done."
Both teams then had chances to retake the lead in the second half, with Martin Kelly striking the post for the visitors, before two late goals from Maya Yoshida and Ward-Prowse handed Southampton all three points.
However, it was Palace's late surrender when a point was within their grasp that most disappointed Allardyce.
"And then in the end we should have showed the resilience we needed to in the last eight minutes when it was 1-1," said Allardyce.
"They had missed some chances, we missed some good chances, but our lads should have ensured we saw the game out and got a 1-1 draw. And in the end their frailties could not manage to do that.
"Desperate defending is not what we are looking for, we should have snuffed out a lot of those problems before they got to that desperation level in terms of defending. But once we had done that, we should have learned our lesson from that.
"But we clearly did not as we did a massive block on the one before they scored. But we had a very good possession and instead of using that possession wisely, we miskicked it straight to the opposition and they went in our box and scored.
"So it is disappointing that we let that point slip in the last eight minutes when you have worked so hard, even though we have not played at our best, to get it."
Looking ahead, however, while Allardyce concedes his team now have the hardest run-in of those sides struggling near the foot of the table, he still believes that 38 points will be enough to secure their Premier League survival.
"We have 31 points after 30 games, so we have stayed ahead of games played with points," he said. "And that is why I think the point would have been massive tonight - 32 points, 30 games - because the quality of our teams in our fixtures coming up - City are in very good form, Leicester are in very good form, we are in good form though, and we have them at home, we have Arsenal at home, Tottenham at home, Burnley and City, Man Utd and Liverpool away.
"So we have the toughest run-in and that is why the point would have been extra special, particularly after the three points at Chelsea. But it did not happen for us.
"Injuries, a little too many, the squad tested to the limit and unfortunately today they did not come up to the task.
"If our players play to their best, we will pick points up. Our players did not play to their best tonight.
"So we then should have said to ourselves: 'It has not gone our way lads, sit here, block it off, frustrate the opposition and who knows, it might be you who does the break out.'
"We have players like Andros Townsend who can run one length of the pitch to the other - we saw it at West Brom - Wilfried Zaha against Chelsea, Benteke in the box will score.
"So we could have sat in and frustrated the opposition and instead we left ourselves too open. So in the end we have to accept defeat and I am little bit disappointed about the way it came, particularly going into the last seven or eight minutes.
"But we have to bounce back and pick the points up and 38 or more is out target now."
