STOKE City boss Alex Neil insists he would be “astonished” if anyone disagreed his side should have had a penalty in their 1-0 defeat to Saints.

Russell Martin’s charges took all three points from Bet365 Stadium after Stuart Armstrong’s first-half free-kick was well defended by a solid Saints back-four.

Stoke felt they should have had a penalty for a Jan Bednarek pull on Nathan Lowe in the box but referee James Bell did not agree.

Neil voiced frustration at key refereeing decisions including Josh Laurent’s foul on Armstrong for the winning free-kick and Lowe being bundled over after the break.

He said: "I don't think we can have any complaints in terms of the efforts of the players. We got undone by one moment of quality where the ball ends up in the top corner.

"Certainly if you look at the foul that they get for their goal and you look at the foul in the box, if you're going to compare both in terms of contact.

"If you look at the two directives at the start of the season, one was based around soft contact for fouls and not buying into it, which I thought for the first foul was really soft, and the other was timewasting.

"I didn't think any of the directives this evening were carried out well enough in terms of the game at all."

Neil added: “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 are 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. Today 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.

“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.”