CLATTS HOW NOT TO DO IT
It would be far too easy to criticise Nottingham Forest in the wake of their latest self-pitying tirade at the Professional Game Match Officials Limited, which is convenient because that is exactly what Football Daily intends to do. Following their defeat against Everton, a game in which Forest were denied three penalties – one stone-waller and two 50-50 shouts on the tried and trusted Seen-‘Em-Given-O-Meter – the serial whingers from the City Ground published a tweet in which they criticised all three decisions, suggested the PGMOL and the game’s Luton-supporting video assistant referee Stuart Attwell were corrupted and harked back to assorted other decisions they feel have gone against them before pompously signing off by announcing that “NFFC will now consider its options”. And on Monday the club asked the PGMOL to release audio recordings between officials to ensure “the integrity of our sport is upheld”.
Quite apart from the fact that a win for Everton didn’t really suit Luton and that the only option Forest can reasonably expect to consider is whether to pay the whacking great fine they’re inevitably be going to landed with by cash or card, Football Daily can’t help but feel the club’s paranoid hierarchy might be better served pondering the fact that the only reason they’re actually in the Premier League is because Huddersfield were denied two clear penalties in the playoff final won by Forest at Wembley the season before last. Weirdly, given their public and increasingly tedious insistence on the laws of the game in their matches being rigidly imposed, the Forest hierarchy and their social media propagandists were strangely quiet when it came to criticising those particular officiating howlers on the day they surfed back into the top flight on a tidal wave of goodwill.
Having been called upon by Gary Neville to resign from his weird position as refereeing consultant at the City Ground in order to distance himself from the conspiracy theories of tinfoil hat-wearing employers who had complained about the appointment of Attwell before, as well as after, their defeat, former referee Mark “Clatts” Clattenburg elected instead to double down on the club’s stance in Monday’s Daily Mail. “Certainly, I would not have risked this situation if I were the head of the referees and all of this could have been avoided had the PGMOL simply made smarter appointments,” blathered Clattenburg in a column, where he made no mention of himself being on the Forest payroll and was therefore taking a completely one-eyed view of proceedings but had the clanging brass balls to suggest that Attwell’s decisions, or lack of them, might have been rooted in unconscious bias.
While Forest have every right to feel hard done by when it comes to the application of the omnishambles that is VAR, their persecution complex, propensity for writing angry letters and constant post-match complaining has won them few friends. What it has done, however, is fuel the flames of paranoia among the more gullible of their supporters in a state of affairs that helps deflect attention from the club’s own rule-breaking and myriad shortcomings when it comes to winning top-flight matches through the usual means of defending stoutly while scoring goals. The main protagonist in all three of Sunday’s “extremely poor decisions”, Ashley Young, must have left Goodison Park unable to believe his luck. Today on Instachat, in a post accompanied by two winky-face emojis, the Everton defender announced he was listening to an “Old Skool tune” by Justin Timberlake. The track in question? Cry Me A River. Touché.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They’ve put themselves right up there in the history of the football club. People will talk about this game for a long time. We were 20 seconds from going to an FA Cup final then 30 seconds later we’re in a penalty shootout. Had [Haji Wright] cut his toenail, we wouldn’t be talking about penalties” – Mark Robins deserves a pat on the back for an incredibly calm reaction after he and his Coventry players had their hearts shattered when VAR denied them from completing one of [one of?! – Football Daily Hype Ed] the greatest comebacks in FA Cup history against Manchester United.
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FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
I got curious about the footnote which got left in when you pasted some text about Swiss-style tournaments from Wikipedia (Friday’s Football Daily). It points to the URL of a chess website, but when clicked redirects to a site about handicrafts. Having done what Football Daily has taught me and looked at an article on Wikipedia, it seems that through a series of mergers and acquisitions, what remains of that venerable, old chess website lives on as a series of pages deep within the bowels of that handicrafts site. I’ll leave it to my betters to determine if that functions as a metaphor for what has happened to venerable, old cup competitions within the body of modern football” –Kári Tulinius.
Now that Pierre Igot has cracked the winning formula for prizeless letter o’ the day please expect a cascade of 1,057 funny and even more not so funny football clips. This one showcasing Cambridge United’s famously versatile use of body parts is definitely one of the former” – John Kyle.
Congratulations on the ability to post a story (Friday’s Quote of the Day) with Australian content without the prefix of flamin’” – Mike Clarke (and no other flamin’ readers).
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Kári Tulinius.