That the clubs blame the leaders for the defeats is childish and dangerous | Nottingham Forest
W.With 19 minutes played into Saturday's Premier League match at Brentford, Nottingham Forest were leading 1-0. The euphoria that had greeted Ivan Toney's return after an eight-month ban for violations of the FA's playing regulations had begun to dissipate. The thinking was that Brentford, dislocated from the team one place above them in the table, were in serious relegation trouble, that Toney might not be enough to save them. Mikkel Damsgaard was then brought down by Orel Mangala just outside the area.
Matt Turner, Forest's American goalkeeper, put up his wall. Toney adjusted the position of the ball a few inches to the right. Then, as referee Darren England worked on the wall, Toney moved it some more, this time taking a handful of the referee's disappearing foam and moving it too. How far did it move in total? Eighteen inches, maybe? Maybe two feet max. It was enough. Toney stepped up and was able to arc the ball, seemingly with relative ease (although free kicks tend to look easy when they go in) between the edge of the wall and Callum Hudson-Odoi, shielding runs on his outside edge, taking it from again inside Turner's left post.
Brentford got the tie and ended up winning 3-2. After which Forest realized that there was only one culprit: England and his team, for allowing Toney to move the ball before taking the free kick. The forest has announced They will be writing to the PGMOL. – Professional Game Match Officials Limited, the body that governs the refereeing of Premier League matches, to protest.
It won't change the result. The goal will still stand. England and its team will not face a sanction. Which is exactly how it should be. Once the game is over, that's it. Players often reposition the ball before taking a free kick, as part of their ritual more than anything else, but also to make sure it is firmly planted on the grass. Perhaps what Toney did constituted moving the ball a little further from its original position than was acceptable, and his subterfuge in moving the foam suggested that he knew that. But players push boundaries all the time. It's the Forest players' job to be alert to that.
For Forest to claim the moral high ground is, frankly, pathetic. The free kick was only awarded because Mangala had cynically tripped a player running into the area; He knew exactly what he was doing, making sure to commit the infraction right on the right side of the line so as not to draw a penalty. Later in the match, when Neal Maupay scored the winning goal, Forest assistant coach Rui Pedro Silva protested that the striker had controlled the ball with his arm in the build-up and was booked. He had not touched the arm and the replay of it demonstrated this very clearly. Forest fans, on the opposite side of the pitch, having seen the initial inconclusive replay on the big screen and presumably thinking that Silva had seen something untoward, reacted with fury.
This is not to attribute a cynical motive to Silva's actions, nor to suggest that he was deliberately encouraging away support, nor to suggest that he was being grossly irresponsible. If he watched the replay and couldn't accept what was obvious, then he's probably too emotional to be useful sitting on the bench during games. If he hadn't seen the replay, maybe it would be worth checking those things in the future before making a fool of himself.
That is what makes the letter to the PGMOL so insidious. It cannot achieve anything useful, beyond deflecting responsibility for a disjointed performance and a poor result onto the referees. And this is not only true in the case of Forest. This applies to all clubs that solemnly announce that they will write to the PGMOL, something that has become an epidemic lately, perhaps an unintended consequence of the illusion of perfection raised by the VAR. Liverpool perhaps had some justification afterwards Goal disallowed by mistake for Luis Díaz at home at Tottenham this season, given there had been such a failure in the process, although even then it seemed like an unnecessary act of theatrics. Other examples look like a calculated move towards the base, an attempt to generate the feeling of a particularly harmed club.
Conspiracy theories are popular because they are so comforting: it's not our fault, what could we have done with the world against us? The reputation of the referees becomes collateral damage.
Forest did not lose on Saturday because Toney moved a free kick a few inches to the right. They lost because Brentford were better than them, because they couldn't handle Toney's movement, because they struggled against the corners, because Ryan Yates was displaced in midfield and because Turner and his wall failed to spot an obvious ruse in plain sight. If they go down, the most likely reason will be a points deduction imposed by Breaches of Premier League profitability and sustainability standards..
Blaming refereeing is refusing to take responsibility. It's childish, but also dangerous.
