Ben Burgess became a fan favourite at Griffin Park during the 2001/02 campaign, netting 18 goals in 51 appearances while on loan from Blackburn Rovers. In total, Ben led the line for ten clubs during a 14-year career.

Now a teacher in Lancashire, he still keeps a close eye on the Bees.

In his latest column, Ben looks ahead to Saturday’s game against Southampton and weighs in on the Richarlison showboating debate.

Showboating

I appear to be swimming against the tide here, but I just cannot see why people have taken Richarlison’s act of showboating against Nottingham Forest so personally.

This is a player who has spent the majority of the last few seasons going to ground too easily, feigning injuries and generally winding up every opposition player, manager and fan. Yet, it’s just three kick-ups that have people screaming from the rooftops.

I’ve heard all sorts of tough talk from ex-players along the lines of ‘If he did that when I was playing, he would have had his legs broken’ or ‘If ____ (insert ex-hardman) had been on the pitch he would have got knocked out’.

My favourite moment involved Jermaine Pennant, who played in the Premier League with a tag on following an arrest, describing Richarlison as ‘classless’!

Brennan Johnson did end up wiping Richarlison out in the end, but that didn’t help him or his team as they tried to get back in the game. I tell the children in my class that ‘it’s not the situation that makes you angry; it’s your response to it’. If the Forest players had calmed down a bit, they would have seen that Richarlison had actually given the ball back and they could have launched a counter attack.

I think there are far worse things that happen on a football pitch than someone trying to display some skills or do something different. After all, in the playground at school I’m still trying to perfect Andrei Kanchelskis’ audacious skill of standing on the ball and looking around in the middle of the game for Glasgow Rangers (look it up if you haven’t seen it).

Southampton

I have always had a huge respect for Southampton. They take pride in doing things their own way and have a similarly successful transfer policy to the Bees.

The amount of profit they have made over the last ten years is incredible. They have sold more players than any other Premier League side to the English top flight's elite clubs since 2011, accumulating £273.25m in the process.

Romeo Lavia (£11m) from Manchester City looks like another incredible bit of business, so much so that they turned down £50m from Chelsea after he had only played four games!

As a player, Southampton is a great place to develop your game; it’s a family club that plays football the right way and they always give young players a chance.

I recall playing at Southampton in 2005 for Hull City. It was around the 70th minute and they made a substitution, bringing on this skinny little kid that looked about 12. We were all thinking ‘this lad is far too weak’. Well, he picked up the ball on one side of the pitch and sprinted to the other side leaving about five of us in his wake. That player was Theo Walcott, just one of a long list of academy graduates that includes the likes of Luke Shaw, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Adam Lallana.

On the touchline, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a manager like Ralph Hasenhuttl, who has endured some extremely heavy defeats and some long winless streaks, yet he still has the belief and support of his players – and the tactical nous - to produce amazing results like the recent success over Chelsea.

VAR

What can you say about VAR? Has football really improved since its Premier League inception in 2018?

If you are going to rob football of its spontaneity, its breakneck speed and its unpredictability then it better be for something that 100 per cent works (or at least 90 per cent).

Players, managers and fans still have to endure that dreaded pause before celebrating while VAR deliberate for ten minutes over a decision that should only have even gone to VAR if it was a clear and obvious error.

If VAR actually worked then there would be no debate, but West Ham’s disallowed goal at Chelsea and even worse Alexis Mac Allister’s goal for Brighton against Leicester show that the system is far from efficient. Potentially one of the great Premier League goals was chalked off for nothing. I’m no rocket scientist but surely you can’t eliminate human error by using humans?