After suffering a setback at the hands of Manchester United by a score of 3-2, Nottingham Forest has filed an official complaint with the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) regarding the performance of the refereeing crew.
The manager of the Forest football team, Steve Cooper, stated that he needed to “bite his tongue” in order to conceal his true feelings regarding referee Stuart Attwell and his colleagues.
However, it is known that officials from Forest departed Old Trafford fuming about a number of decisions that they considered to be extremely important in determining the winner of the game.
In the middle of the second half, referee Attwell sent off the captain of the Forest team, Joe Worrall, since he believed that Worrall was the last man when he fouled Bruno Fernandes, despite the fact that Worrall’s central defensive partner Willy Boly was near by.
After then, the referee awarded the home team a penalty kick for a foul committed by Danilo on Marcus Rashford, which many people believed to be exceedingly harsh on the away team. After that, Fernandes scored a goal from the penalty spot that ultimately turned out to be the game-winning goal.
Robert Jones, the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), reviewed both choices but ultimately agreed with the ones that Attwell made on the field.
The decision regarding whether or not to go directly to PGMOL will be made by Forest within the next twenty-four hours. PGMOL is already in the spotlight due to Mike Dean’s admission that he did not instruct Anthony Taylor to review Marc Cucurella having his hair pulled during Chelsea’s London derby with Tottenham last season because he was “a mate.” Forest will make their decision within the next twenty-four hours.
Cooper stated the following after the match on Saturday, in which Forest held a 2-0 lead after only four minutes of play: “In games like these you need things to be how they should be. It took me by surprise how quickly the judgments were made, so I won’t go into too much detail here because I don’t want to get into trouble.
“In terms of what [you] really feel, you just have to bite your tongue, but of course they were defining you,” she said.
