Clubs blaming officials for defeats is childish and dangerous | Jonathan Wilson

WIn the 19th minute of Saturday’s Premier League match against Brentford, Nottingham Forest were 1-0 up. The euphoria that had greeted Ivan Toney’s return after an eight-month ban for breaching Premier League betting rules began to dissipate. The thinking was that Brentford, who faced the team one place above them in the table, were in serious relegation trouble, and that Toney might not be in trouble.
enough to save them. Then Mikkel Damsgaard was felled just outside the penalty area by Orel Mangala.

Matt Turner, Forest’s American goalkeeper, set his wall. Toney adjusted the position of the ball a few inches to the right. Then, as referee Darren England fussed around the wall, Toney moved it a little further, this time grabbing a handful of the referee’s disappearing foam and moving it too. How far did he move it in total? Eighteen centimeters maybe? Maybe two meters maximum. It was enough. Toney came running and was able to arc the ball with apparent relative ease (although free kicks often look easy going in) between the edge of the wall and Callum Hudson-Odoi, whilst guarding for runs on the outside edge, allowing the ball went in. back into Turner’s left post.

Brentford had the equalizer and eventually won 3-2. After which 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 write to the PGMOL – the Professional Game Match Officials Limited, the governing body
officiating Premier League matches – to protest.

The result will not change. The target remains standing. England and his team will not face any sanctions. That’s exactly as it should be. Once the game is done, it’s done. Players often reposition the ball before taking a free kick, both as part of their ritual and otherwise, but also to ensure that the ball is placed neatly on the grass. Perhaps Toney meant he moved the ball a little further from its original position than was acceptable – and his subterfuge of moving the foam suggested he knew that too. But players are constantly pushing boundaries. It is the job of Forest players to be alert to that.

For Forest to claim the moral high ground is, quite frankly, pathetic. The free kick was only awarded because Mangala had cynically tripped a player running into the penalty area; he knew exactly what he was doing and made sure he placed exactly on the right side of the line so as not to give away a penalty. Later in the match, when Neal Maupay scored the winner, Forest’s assistant coach Rui Pedro Silva protested that the striker had controlled the ball with his arm in the run-up and was shown a yellow card. It didn’t hit the arm, and the replay showed that very clearly. Forest fans, at the other end of the ground, who had seen the first unclear replay on the big screen and presumably thought Silva had seen something unpleasant, reacted angrily.

The intention is not to attribute a cynical motive to Silva’s actions, not to suggest that he purposefully removed support, to suggest that he was deeply irresponsible. If he watched the replay and couldn’t accept the obvious, then he’s probably too emotional to be useful on the bench during games. If he hadn’t seen a replay, it might be worth checking such things in the future before he made a fool of himself.

That is what makes the letter to the PGMOL so treacherous. It cannot achieve anything useful other than passing the buck for a disjointed performance and poor result onto the referees. And this does not only apply to Bos. It applies to all clubs that solemnly announce that they will write to the PGMOL, something that has become an epidemic of late, perhaps an unintended consequence of the illusion of perfection conjured up by VAR. Liverpool may have had some justification after Luis Díaz’s wrongly disallowed goal at Tottenham this season as the process went so wrong, although even then it seemed like an unnecessary act of theatrics. Other examples appear to be a calculated move towards the grassroots, an attempt to create the feeling that a club is being uniquely wronged.

Conspiracy theories are popular because they are so reassuring: it’s not our fault – what on earth could we have done with the world against us? The reputation of referees becomes collateral damage.

Forest did not lose on Saturday because Toney moved a free kick a few centimeters to the right. They lost because Brentford were better than them, because they couldn’t cope with Toney’s movement, because they struggled with inswinging corners, because Ryan Yates was crowded out of midfield and because Turner and his wall failed to create a clear trick in the full view to discover. If they do fall, the most likely reason will be a points deduction imposed for breaches of the Premier League’s winning and sustainability rules.

To blame the referee is to refuse to take responsibility. It’s childish, but also dangerous.