Nigel Adkins felt Saints were hard done by in their 3-0 defeat at Brighton.

Saints had a catalogue of refereeing decisions go against them including:

- Adam Lallana’s shot that crossed the line not being given as a goal

- Dan Harding picking up a disputed early booking that saw him have to be substituted in order to prevent an early sending off

- A Rickie Lambert penalty appeal turned down

- Lambert red carded after a tussle with Adam El-Abd

A frustrated Adkins, whose side remain top of the table but are now level on points with West Ham, said: “It was a game that we totally dominated in the first half, the game plan worked a treat, we passed the ball about well.

“We came away to a team that want to pass the ball, we denied them that opportunity and then we had control of the ball.

“We created some really good opportunities – Do Prado for one that went over the bar and Adam Lallana did actually score a goal, the ball went over the line. I’ve looked at the video and you want goalline technology or a linesman who can see the ball going over the line and unfortunately that hasn’t happened.

“The booking of Dan Harding in the first half was a super challenge in my opinion when I’ve looked at the video again – he’s won the ball, it’s not a two footed lunge and the referee has gone and booked him and because of that and a challenge later on I had to take him off and put Dan Fox on.

“Obviously I had to use one of the substitutes and I knew the substitutes would come into play late in the game because of the close proximity of the games we’ve been playing. It was disappointing from my point of view we had to use Dan Fox so early.

“The sending off of Rickie Lambert has changed the whole complexion of the game.

“I believe we could have gone on and won the game with the way we were playing in the first half.

“It was a coming together, Rickie has grappled to the floor, he’s trying to get up, the referee’s right over him, the lad’s stopping him and has got the brace around the legs, Rickie has pushed him away and the referee has deemed it as violent conduct and sent him off.

“We go down to ten men and Brighton are a good side to pass the football about and if you allow them the opportunity to do, which we didn’t in the first half because of the way we set up, they are obviously going to pose some problems.

“To go down to ten men is challenging but we wanted to win the game and we tried our best to leave two up the field of play. Guly had a gluteal injury as well so Jonathan Forte went up there.

“Their goal was a sickener because they had something to hang onto then and then we had to chase it a little bit and end up on the wrong end of the scoreline.”