PGMOL boss Howard Webb has admitted that Nottingham Forest should have been awarded a penalty in their controversial 2-0 Premier League defeat to Everton earlier this month.
The Reds had three penalties waved away by referee Anthony Taylor, which sparked anger among the visitors. After the match, Nottingham Forest criticized Taylor’s refereeing and video assistant referee Stuart Attwell, accusing them of making “three extremely poor decisions”.
The club also released a scathing statement suggesting bias against relegation rivals Luton Town. One of these controversial decisions came in the second half when Everton defender Ashley Young appeared to trip Forest player Callum Hudson-Odoi as he sprinted towards goal.
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Despite Forest’s initial objections, Taylor was not advised to reassess the incident on the on-field VAR monitor, and the match continued. Webb has since revealed that he would have “preferred” that Taylor made a judgment about the incident after consulting the field monitor.
He suggests that if this had happened, a different decision might have been made. During the latest episode of the Premier League’s Mic’d Up referee show, Webb discussed Hudson-Odoi’s criminal case. This is what he had to say:
Host and former England striker Michael Owen asked: “Everyone I’ve spoken to thinks this was a penalty. Please explain how VAR made that decision.”
Webb responded: “I understand why we would have preferred to intervene in this situation. The referee waves away the penalty appeal. The VAR looks at it and asks itself the question: ‘Was the decision not to award a clear and obvious wrong decision?’ and concluded that it was not so.”
He continued: “You hear him describe two players struggling for the ball. He sees no clear action from Young that he considers worthy of an intervention, an action that reaches the threshold of being very clear.
“But we would have preferred if the referee had gone to the screen to make a judgment for himself in this situation. If that had happened, we would probably have ended up with a different outcome.”
Owen then asked, “Okay, during that noise we hear Anthony Taylor say he thinks the ball has been won by defender Ashley Young. If the VAR sees very clearly that the ball has not been won, shouldn’t that immediately prompt, ‘Okay, you saw it wrong. Go to the monitor’, or don’t’.
To which Webb replied: “We heard Anthony Taylor say in the footage there that he believed the ball had been played by Ashley Young, and we know that’s not the case. We know only Callum Hudson-Odoi is touching the ball.”
“VAR’s first job is to look at the available footage and judge: ‘Was the decision on the pitch clearly wrong?’ A situation could arise where the referee describes the ball as having been played by the defender.
“But actually, when the VAR looks at it, it sees that that’s not the case, but it’s still not a penalty. For example, the attacker may have simulated.
“So you can’t just rely on what the referee says to judge whether something is clearly and obviously wrong. But when there’s VAR, you look at it and think, ‘Is it clearly wrong or not?’ You can also absolutely take into account what the referee says.”
“And if there’s a certain aspect like, ‘Who played the ball?’ then that’s an important aspect that can be taken into account to give the VAR the confidence that, ‘Yes, the referee has to go to the screen, because I think it is.’
“And that should have happened on this occasion. But they are mainly there to look at the images and form an opinion. Is the decision on the field clearly wrong in their professional judgment? In this case we would have preferred such an intervention had.” .”
Owen: “Players make mistakes. Goalkeepers, referees, everyone makes mistakes. But how can you on the referee’s side prevent these kinds of things from happening in the future? Or should people just accept that mistakes are made?”.
Webb noted: “Yes, the game is played by people, it is controlled by people. And of course it is our job to ensure that we have a positive impact on the game by identifying correct decisions on the pitch. This was not the case. An.”
“And if that doesn’t happen, the VAR consistently recognizes when a mistake has happened on the field and intervenes.”
“But of course they are also people who make judgments, so we always try to reduce the number of mistakes we make. We meet with our VARs to train more often than ever before. We share a lot of information online.”
“We provide guidance to the officials, we share discussions about why something didn’t work out as it should. And ultimately, we share that final information to try to ensure that we can learn from every situation and, year after year, every year, reduce the number of errors to the minimum possible.”
Speaking about Forest’s two first-half penalties, both involving Everton defender Young, Webb expressed his satisfaction with the way the situations were handled.
Webb continued: “The first two we think were really subjective calls. The first involved some contact from Ashley Young with Gio Reyna. “There was contact. The referee saw that but didn’t think it was impressive enough to penalize.
“We’ve set a pretty high threshold for penalizing contact all over the pitch, but also in the penalty area. That’s what the game has asked us to do. Not every contact is a foul and this was one where there was quite a bit of were violations.” minimal contact, consistent with other situations we’ve waved away this season.
“The VAR rightly checked that one. The second was a handball penalty situation. Ashley Young was involved again.
“The ball hits his arm. He moves while trying to close a shot from close range and the referee judged that the arm was in a natural position and the VAR check also completed that – very understandable, in this subjective zone of handball , so we thought both situations were in line with our expectations.”