Nottingham Forest | Premier League
Nottingham Forest's official account has unleashed a scathing critique aimed at the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), alleging favoritism towards Luton Town and lambasting erroneous refereeing decisions in their 2-0 loss to Everton. The Tricky Trees find themselves precariously perched just a point above 18th-placed Luton following today's defeat, with only four games left in their battle for survival.
Idrissa Gueye broke the deadlock for the Toffees after 29 minutes, with Dwight McNeil adding a second midway through the second half. Nottingham Forest, hovering dangerously close to the relegation zone, expressed frustration over the referee's decisions, particularly the non-award of a penalty for Ashley Young's handball inside the box. However, what's truly sparked attention is the club's bold accusation that VAR is biased in favor of Luton.
On X, formerly Twitter, Nottingham posted:
"Three extremely poor decisions – three penalties not given – which we simply cannot accept.
We alerted the PGMOL about VAR's alleged bias towards Luton before the match, but they didn't make a change. Our patience has been repeatedly tested.
NFFC will now explore its options."
Openly accusing referees of bias toward a specific club is uncommon, and Nottingham's statement has garnered both criticism and support from fans in the comments. However, such allegations, lacking concrete evidence, may not sit well with the FA and could potentially lead to sanctions.
by markmillerdavis
18 comments
I’m so glad someone has finally posted this.
MOTD made a good point in that it was probably more in Lutons best interest if they drew or Forest won so it doesn’t suit the narrative that he purposely cheated them because he is a Luton fan.
Liverpool 🤝 Arsenal 🤝 Nottingham Forest
Sending out tin pot conspiracy statements.
Where is the evidence of bias towards Luton?
Bit the decisions were not given by the bold dude on the pitch 🤔..is he also a Lutton fan ? Or maybe Burnley ? Or what about Everton ? Cause they are all in the same predicament .
Nottingham forrest , with their cheating , sacking a manager who brought them here , with their scum owner who thinks is corleone , with this latter are as incompetent and scummy as the incompetent referees especially VAR . Incompetence all round .
To employ the biggest idiot of them Clattenburg as an referees consultant ? What fucking position us that ? That job description can only be in teaching players how to con referees . What else will he be consulting in ?
About time a club told it how it is.
Didn’t see the penalty incidents, should some/all of them been given?
Anyone defending PGMOL is a dogmatist and not a football fan. Team of old boys who look out for themselves. Just wait till they fuck you over (which they probably already have).
Whilst there are valid points about the quality of refereeing and the impact this has, I find the conspiratorial side of things a. It embarrassing. You don’t have to spend much time thinking about it to realise it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If the implication is that the VAR being a Luton fan meant there was bias in officiating then what about the ref? And surely they’d want a draw rather than either side winning? Pretty much every side has had major decisions go against them this season – was that all due to bias or corruption too?
I think people are grasping for reasons to explain why VAR implementation is so poor, and tbh people do the same when their side loses. It’s been going on pre-VAR too, have heard enough people say that Halsey was unfair to Fulham because he was a QPR fan. In reality there are plenty of wrong decisions that get less attention because there’s no one to blame. People also tend to ignore when things go their way, especially when it challenges their beliefs.
The referees all fib about who they support anyway. Of all the top level referees there’s ever been, none of them happen to support a long term premier league team let alone a top 6 one? Despite a lot of the current ones being from the greater Manchester area?
What’s the chances of that?
Just a reminder of this map of referee birthplaces.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gunners/s/20h3Drl2nQ
It been like this throughout the last 20-30 years.
Or they were shit and Everton smashed them
They need to be clear about the penalty decisions. I’ve seen all 3 given and I’ve seen all 3 also not given.
This whole conspiracy angle only works if you remove Anthony Taylor from the equation.
If not then you have to ask yourself why Taylor didn’t give any of them. Especially the Reyna one when he’s like 10 yards away looking straight at it.
As always it was just poor officiating all round or Anthony Taylor was also in on it.
We’ve been getting Anthony Taylor ref our games against City for most of the last 10 years and haven’t lost our heads as much as Forest have
They’ll find a way to justify it. PMGOL would rather move heaven and earth to support their refs than address the real issues with standards.
They’d much rather put out statements saying refs made the right calls than do their jobs and complete investigations, issue punishments and apologies, and reform the corrupt, lazy standards we’ve been seeing since VAR was introduced.
While it’s quite funny how they’ve gone about it, it’s is bs that someone like that can be on VAR. Why do they need him on this game where he can be impartial.
What I don’t get is the statement is stupid from forest and amateur hour trolling trash
But, just don’t put yourself in the position to have someone be able to accuse you of this no matter how unlikely it is
All it needed was a non Luton fan on VAR and it just becomes another VAR is shit debate and not a chance for anyone to think of it as bias corruption shit
It’s just so dumb on pgmol but there isn’t anyone smart at the top it seems