by With 19 minutes of Saturday’s Premier League match at Brentford played, Nottingham Forest were leading 1-0. The euphoria that greeted Ivan Toney’s return after an eight-month ban for breaches of the Premier League’s gambling regulations had begun to dissipate. It was thought that Brentford, isolated against the team above them in the table, were in serious relegation trouble, Toney might not have
enough to save them. Orel Mangala then brought down Mikkel Damsgaard just outside the box.
Matt Turner, Forest’s USA goalkeeper, set his wall. Toney adjusted the position of the ball a few inches to the right. Then, with referee Darren England leaning around the wall, Toney moved it some more, this time taking a handful of the referee’s disappearing foam and moving it as well. How far did it move in total? Eighteen inches, maybe? Maybe two feet at most. It was enough. Toney stepped up and was able to arc the ball, apparently quite easily – although free kicks look easy when they go in – between the edge of the wall and Callum Hudson-Odoi, watching for runs on his outside edge, giving it. back inside Turner’s left hand post.
Brentford had the equalizer and won 3-2. Afterwards Forest realized that there was only one party to blame: England and his team, for allowing Toney to move the ball before taking the free kick. Forest have announced that they will be writing to the PGMOL – the Professional Game Match Officers Limited, the governing body
the performance of Premier League games – to protest.
It will not change the result. The goal will still stand. Neither England nor his team will face a sanction. Which is exactly as it should be. When the game is done, it’s done. Players will often reposition the ball before taking a free kick, as much as part of their ritual as anything else, but also to make sure it is sitting cleanly on the grass. Perhaps Toney’s intention was to move the ball a little further from its original position than was acceptable – and his subterfuge as he moved the foam showed that he knew as much. But players push boundaries all the time. It is the job of the Forest players to be aware of that.
It is unfortunate, indeed, for Forest to claim the moral high ground. The free kick was only awarded because Mangala had cynically run a player into the box; he knew exactly what he was doing, making sure he made the office exactly on the right side of the line without being penalized. Later in the game, when Neal Maupay scored the winner, Forest assistant coach Rui Pedro Silva protested that the forward had control of the ball with his hand in the build-up and was booked. He wasn’t hit by the hand, and the replay showed that too, very clearly. Forest fans, on the other side of the ground, after seeing the inconclusive first replay on the big screen and thinking that Silva had seen something unexpected, reacted with anger.
It is not to attribute cynical intent to Silva’s actions, without implying that he was deliberately alienating the supporters, which would imply that he was extremely irresponsible. If he saw the replay and couldn’t accept the obvious, he’s probably too emotional to be useful sitting on the bench during games. If he hadn’t seen a replay, he might want to check things like that in the future before making a fool of himself.
That’s what makes the letter to the PGMOL so odd. It cannot achieve anything useful, apart from placing responsibility for isolated performance and poor results on the officers. And this is not only true of Forest. It is true of all the clubs who solemnly announce that they will be writing to the PGMOL, which has become an epidemic of late, perhaps an unintended consequence of the illusion of perfection raised by VAR. Liverpool may have been justified in having Luis Díaz’s goal wrongly disallowed at Tottenham this season, as the process failed, although it appeared to be an unnecessary act of theatre. Other examples seem to be calculated play to the core, an attempt to make sense of a uniquely wronged 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? Collateral damage is done to referees’ reputations.
Forest didn’t lose on Saturday as 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 to get corners, because Ryan Yates was congested in midfield and because Turner than his wall to see the clear horror. If they are reduced, the most likely reason is a points deduction imposed for breaches of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules.
To blame the referee is to refuse to take responsibility. It is childish, but it is also dangerous.
