The Premier League referees’ head, Howard Webb, has defended his subordinates in the Video Assistant Referees (VAR) room for the Brentford vs Nottingham Forest match after the Tricky Trees wrote to express their displeasure over a certain incident.
The game, which marked the return of Ivan Toney to top flight football after eight months out as a punishment for breaking betting laws, was marked by a controversy involving the England striker.
Toney, who was given the captain’s armband by his team in a show of solidarity, scored a beautiful free kick in the 19th minute to equalise for Brentford after Danilo had put the visitors one-nil up in the third minute of the game. However, camera angles showed that Toney moved the ball outside the marked zone for his free kick equaliser. Brentford went ahead to win the game 3 – 2.
Forest, irked at the outcome of the game, chose to complain about Toney giving himself an advantage for the equalising goal. Their fiercely worded petition to the PGMOL, who have come under serious attack this season for their controversial decisions, have been making the rounds.
This time, however, the organisation’s leader, Webb, chose not to issue an apology. He instead issued a defence of his subordinates to Forest, who felt slighted by the VAR decision to overlook Toney’s action in the buildup to his amazing free kick goal.
In a written response to Forest’s query on why the VAR chose not to get involved in the “serious missed incident”, Webb stated that pointed that under protocols agreed by the International Football Association Board, VAR can only be used to rule on errors relating to goals, penalties, red cards and mistaken identity.
In essence, while he did not dispute the rightness or wrongness of Forest’s claim, he stated that the VAR jad no jurisdiction to interfere in the issue.
A staunch critic of VAR himself, Gary Neville, meanwhile, has accused Arsenal and Liverpool for setting a negative precedent with written complaints to the PGMOL on VAR issues.
Both clubs have been victims of poor refereeing and VAR decisions this season and were among the first to send in complaint letters.
Toney, meanwhile, admitted to moving the ball away from where the referee laid it for him because he saw a gap to score.
“Yeah I saw the gap”, he said in his post match comments. “Sometimes you have a gap either way and I bent the ball around the wall and was so happy to see it go in.”
