sport news Referees' chief Howard Webb admits Nottingham Forest SHOULD have had a penalty ... trends now
Howard Webb, the head of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, has admitted Nottingham Forest should have had one penalty in their controversial defeat to Everton on April 21.
The visitors to Goodison Park felt that they should have had three spot-kicks awarded in their favour during the Premier League clash, and criticised the officials post-match on social media and in mainstream outlets.
Whilst Webb felt that the first two, a foul and a handball, were 'subjective calls' which were correct, he agreed that the third one - Ashley Young's tackle on Callum Hudson-Odoi - should have been reviewed by the referee if VAR had intervened.
Referee Anthony Taylor believed that Young played the ball - while VAR officials Stuart Attwell and Simon Long did not see anything to overrule or review the call.
Webb told Match Officials Mic'd Up: 'I understand why we would have preferred an intervention on this situation. The referee waves away the penalty appeal. The VAR looks at it and asks himself the question, 'Was the non-award clearly and obviously wrong?' and came to the conclusion it wasn't.
Howard Webb is set to admit that Nottingham Forest should have had a penalty at Everton
Ashley Young's challenge on Callum Hudson-Odoi from behind should have been reviewed
'You hear him describing two players tussling for the ball. He doesn't see a clear action by Young that he considers to be worthy of intervention, one that reaches the threshold of being very clear.
'But we would have preferred an intervention for the referee to go to the screen to make a judgement for himself in this situation and probably would have come out with a different outcome if that would've happened.'
When the show's host Michael Owen asked if people may have to accept that referees are human and will make human errors, Webb replied: 'Yeah, the game is played by human beings, it's officiated by human beings.
'And obviously our job is to try to ensure that we have a positive impact on the game by identifying correct decisions on the field. This wasn't one. And then when that doesn't happen, the VAR consistently recognises when an error has happened on the field and steps in.
'But of course they're humans making judgements as well so we always are trying to reduce the number of errors that we make. We get together on a regular basis more than ever before with our VARs to train. We share loads of information online. We give guidance to the officials, we share discussions around why something didn't work out in the way that it should.
'And then ultimately we share that final information to try to ensure that the learning is taken out of every situation and, year on year, reduce those number of errors to the minimal amount that we can.'
Nottingham Forest made a post on X (formerly Twitter) slamming
