Johnny Phillips: VAR’s problems go viral thanks to Nottingham Forest’s tweet
To have been in the room when Nottingham Forest’s social media admin was handed the tweet to type out on the platform now known as X, last Sunday afternoon, would have been priceless.
For anyone left who has not seen what was posted – and there cannot be many of you as the tweet has been seen more than 50 million times in less than a week – this is it: “Three extremely poor decisions – three penalties given – which we simply cannot accept. We warned the PGMOL that the VAR is a Luton fan before the game but they didn’t change him. Our patience has been tested multiple times. NFFC will now consider its options.”
While the club had a very strong argument to make about the competency of the VAR process, they ceded all the moral high ground by questioning the integrity of the officials based on who they support.
On three separate occasions during last Sunday’s 2-0 defeat to Everton, Nuno Espirito Santo’s side had a good case for a penalty when Ashley Young twice appeared to commit fouls in the box and on the other occasion handled the ball.
The handball decision of Anthony Taylor on the pitch – no penalty – was never going to be overturned but the two fouls should at the very least have been referred to the pitchside monitor by VAR Stuart Attwell.
Forest’s response was bizarrely worded and rightly condemned at the time. Yet, there is a wider sympathy for their position and the club has since pulled back some of that high ground after the tweet was posted.
On Sky’s Super Sunday, Gary Neville suggested that Forest’s refereeing consultant Mark Clattenburg, a former Premier League official, should resign to distance himself from the statement.
A fair comment from Neville, Clattenburg should not be condoning such statements.
Neville also questioned what options Forest had and – while initially it appeared they were limited – fellow pundit Louis Saha made the point that a stand needed to be made, given this particular season’s errors around VAR.
