Look, no excuses here, we need to take our medicine, we brought this defeat on ourselves by not pressing for a win or sufficiently holding what we had, but I want to quickly highlight an issue that we all know needs fixing.

I’m not advocating that we should do this kind of review during the game, obviously that would be a ridiculous disruption. I’m not advocating that every decision be reviewed either. However, contentious issues that had an effect on the game could be reviewed after the final whistle quite easily, the Aussies did it recently in the A-League.

In this case, the referee made a mistake, Jermaine Pennant conned him to win a free kick that lead to the winning goal at the Britannia Stadium last night. Referees are human beings and human beings are not infallible. He got it wrong and it cost us dearly.

Some people might argue that there should have been a penalty at either end, but even with replays that’s still going to be subjective most of the time, diving generally can be spotted on review and if there’s any doubt, then a decision, or lack thereof, could be allowed to stand.

Let’s run though the incident quickly, here’s Lee Probert’s position as the incident took place and there’s nothing wrong, although I’m not 100% convinced that he was paying full attention at the time:-

Stan protested his innocence and the replay, shown from behind the incident, looking down the touchline, shows why.

I’m not sure you would call this so much a dive as playing for it. Doesn’t matter, Jermaine Pennant set out to fool the referee into awarding a free kick and it’s worth it because the worst that can happen to him is a yellow card and that’s highly unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, the prize ranges from a simple free kick to a booking or dismissal for his opponent and that might mean a penalty if he’s in the box.

It’s totally worth the risk and it paid off this time, as it does most of the time.

Here’s the question though, if Jermaine Pennant knew a video panel with the power to dish out a suspension would review this incident if anything significant came of it, would he have taken the fall?

I think not.

Hate the game, not the player. They all do it, because it’s worth it. We’ve seen our own players do it too, don’t be a hypocrite now folks!

Oh, and if you really want to throw your hatred at the referee, you want to call him a cheat, or worse, it’s really simple, if a pattern emerges where certain referees are having more video reviews turning over decisions or non-decisions than other referees, then they start getting their performances reviewed a little more closely. That might lead to a little “additional training” and some time off.

I’ll be following up at some point with the statshack and possibly a little analysis, but this was a game we bossed and lost, the last game was a game that Everton bossed and we won. It goes that way sometimes, but we’ve clearly got many problems that need fixing in short order.

My issue is that once again I feel like I’m not certain the referee’s decision didn’t effect the scoreline and that shouldn’t be the case.