CHERRIES skipper Simon Francis insisted he did not want VAR to take the emotion out of football and added: “We may as well not celebrate anymore.”

Francis and his team-mates found themselves on the tough end of two handball decisions by video assistant Chris Kavanagh at Burnley – which were not given on-field by match referee Mike Dean.

Joshua King's first-half effort was chalked off after an apparent handball against Philip Billing, when the ball seemed to come off his shoulder.

At 1-0 down, Harry Wilson's equaliser after a counter-attack was then ruled out by VAR and a penalty to Burnley awarded at the other end for Adam Smith's judged handball.

Burnley went on to triumph 3-0 at home thanks to goals from Matej Vydra, Jay Rodriguez and Dwight McNeil.

Francis told afcbTV: “I’ve been in games that VAR has played a part in, watched a lot of games VAR has played a part in.

“But Saturday wasn’t right for me. The lads were gutted in there.

“Smudge (Smith) is really disappointed with the way it’s gone against him. I just think slowly these decisions and this situation we are in – it’s taking a lot of the fun of scoring a goal, the celebration out of it.

“We may as well not celebrate anymore. We may as well wait a minute or two and see if the goal actually gets given.

“It happened on two occasions for us. We feel hard done by because you look at the game, I don’t think it’s a 3-0 game to Burnley.

“Everyone else will look at it like that. The result is the most important thing, don’t get me wrong but we feel hard done by.”

Defeat left Cherries two points above the bottom three in the top flight.

Francis added: “I know in a couple of weeks there’s delegates coming in from the Premier League to talk to us, a couple of the players and the staff about how we think it’s going.

“For sure, I will bring up Burnley and the way we can try to improve it as a whole and make it more consistent, make it for the obvious errors we are seeing in the game. On Saturday I feel that went against us.”