Nottingham Forest defeated West Ham United on Sunday to keep alive their hopes of Champions League football with just one game left to play this season.
The Reds take on Chelsea next weekend, knowing that a win could see the team enter the elite European club competition next season.
Forest are definitely going to be in Europe next season and with Chelsea to play at the City Ground, all three competitions remain a possibility for the Reds.
The goals on Sunday were scored by Morgan Gibbs-White and Nikola Milenkovic, with the second strike causing a bit of a debate afterwards.
Photo by Steve Bardens/Getty Images
Photo by Steve Bardens/Getty Images
Mark Halsey disgruntled with VAR during Nottingham Forest game
The former Premier League referee doesn’t believe that the goal scored by Milenkovic on Sunday should have stood.
He believes that Dominguez, who was offside, should have been deemed to have been impacting the West Ham defenders and the goal ruled out.
Halsey does, however, concede that the length of time that the supporters were forced to wait for a decision was nothing short of farcical.
He told The Sun: “The Premier League match centre announced that VAR had checked and confirmed Nikola Milenkovic was onside, while teammate Nicolas Dominguez was offside but not impacting play for Forest’s second goal.
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“Dominguez had to be impacting and interfering because he was right in there with the defenders when the ball was delivered.
“Offside itself is factual, but whether a player is impacting is a subjective call, so it cannot be called an obvious error.
“But for me, VAR spends too much time disallowing goals.
“The semi-automated technology introduced last month did not work because the penalty area was too congested. It ended up taking more than six minutes to make a decision.
“That is far too long, highlighting that the system provided by Genus Sports was not ready to be used in the Premier League.
“If it looks like it will take six minutes to decide, then just give the goal!”
Forest have enjoyed better fortunes with VAR this season
Thankfully, it’s the football that has been the main talking point this season, with the Reds flying high for a large part of the campaign.
There have been a few incidents that have gone against Forest, but not too many, and certainly not as frequently as last season, when it really did feel like the world was against the club.
It’s interesting that Halsey thought the decision was wrong to award Forest a goal at the weekend, yet his main gripe appears to be that the decision took far too long.
VAR still has far too many uncertain areas, and it’s proving a bit of a minefield for the powers that be to make sure everything is absolutely spot on with it.