Nottingham Forest’s high-flying season has meant that any VAR concerns have been mitigated compared to last season, but the system’s faults remain annoying.
Even in Forest’s 7-0 triumph over Brighton on Saturday, Richard Keys noticed a VAR error in a Chris Wood goal, which fortunately did not cost Forest the game.
VAR also missed a red card in Forest’s win over Southampton in January, further eroding trust in decision-making that could cost Forest points this season in the fight for European football.
Casting our minds back to last season, Forest issued a statement criticizing VAR for missing seemingly obvious penalties in a 2-0 loss to Everton in the midst of a tight relegation battle, a dispute that damaged Nuno Espirito Santo so profoundly that Forest began adjusting training to oppose VAR.
However, it appears that VAR will once again dominate Forest fans’ debate, since details of another huge blunder have emerged, this time relating to the match against Southampton.
Major VAR error confirmed in Nottingham Forest vs. Southampton.
Forest defeated Southampton 3-2 in a game that became more competitive than it should have been, with Espirito Santo’s team leading 3-0 at halftime after Elliot Anderson scored his first Forest goal.
Southampton pulled one back, but Nikola Milenkovic scored Forest’s fourth, which was controversially ruled out by VAR.
It appeared weird at the moment, but a BBC Sport article confirmed that the VAR intervention was erroneous when the Key Match Incidents panel’s findings were released.
On the verdict, the panel said: “The VAR recommended referee Anthony Taylor to disallow the goal because Forest striker Chris Wood came from an offside position and hampered the Southampton defenders’ ability to compete for the ball. Wood did not touch the ball. An independent panel determined that the goal should have been given.
While this revelation provides some clarity for the Forest coaching staff in terms of their side scoring another legitimate goal, it merely adds to the irritation of an already strained relationship between Forest and the match officials.
However, the findings are even more distressing given how VAR and the Premier League handled the contentious decision at the time.
The Premier League stood by Nikola Milenkovic’s VAR blunder at the time.
This season, the Premier League has launched an X account to provide crucial explanation to the VAR decisions that have perplexed supporters at the City Ground and across the country.
At the moment, the match centre account agreed with the new report that Chris Wood interfered with the play from an offside position, but it took 17 days for the Key Match Incidents report to contradict this conclusion.
Yan Bednarek had just scored Southampton’s first goal to trim the lead to two, which was further reduced in stoppage time, forcing the Forest squad to play out a close game that should have been easily won with Milenkovic’s goal.
A Forest fan was observed presenting Anthony Taylor a bank card in an amusing gesture while the referee reviewed the Milenkovic decision, illustrating that genuine methods such as the X account are doing little to persuade people of VAR’s legitimacy.
The Key Match Incidents report is a nice addition, but it does not change the fact that the Southampton game might have gone either way following the error, with the potential fury if Forest did not win potentially outweighing the Everton hostility last season.
