Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[Baldy]

Looked at Braga 2 Freiburg 1 result last night and thought Freiburg will get through. They are only one goal behind.

Then it occured to me .............

COYVB 

[Smithy]

I honestly think Anderson only stayed on the pitch because of Ollie's honesty in carrying on playing after a truly dangerous tackle. Maybe, we are too honest. If that was a Chelsea or Citeh player, they would still be rolling over this morning. He was completely out of control with studs raised and a straight leg contact on his opponents ankle. That is a straight red card every day of the week.

I completely agree with this.  If Ollie stays down, they send on medical, a stretcher and so on, and the play is therefore 'stopped' while VAR conducts the review, I think there is a much higher chance of VAR intervening.  The fact he got up and tried to run it off helped VAR decide it wasn't that bad.

The reality is, Anderson is a very lucky boy (and I'm sure he knows it), which is disappointing for us, because he and MGW were the best players on the pitch, I thought.

[AV82EC]

Had a nice day in Nottingham yesterday, great city for a few drinks and food. Found the Forest fans generally fair and knowledgable with a few over excited post match.

The match: we played ok and looked very in control until Onana went off, I couldn’t see them scoring and defence/midfield were fine. All our issues are inthe final third though. Rogers and Buendia must be the least press resistant attackers in England. Rogers was no better than Ok last night and seems to be lacking in confidence whereas Buendia threw in one of his all too regular appalling performances. This of course means Watkins gets no service and he rarely appeared out of Milenkovics pocket and when he did the big lad dispossessed him regularly. Our other problem is McGinn. The last three games he’s been a shadow of his former self with little drive or urgency. Is he carrying a knock?

Another key thing last night was Igor Jesus do the best man marking job on Pau Torres. He totally
Nullified Pau’s passing lines.

All in all walking away from the ground I was left frustrated more than annoyed or angry knowing we can play so much better then this. Unai and the players need to find some solutions. This is all very reminiscent of the start of the season. We need a spark.

[brontebilly]

I really hope we just go for it next week.  They will definitely play a back 5 with 4 across midfield in a low block and hope to hit the back post for that ugly twat up front to head in.  I'd consider playing Tammy and Watkins from the start.

Leaving us even lighter in midfield, without Onana too.

[Behind Bluenose Lines]

I've slept on it.

It's half-time, and we've had our crap half.

We score early and it's game on!

Let's relegate Paulinha & his mates on Sunday now!

[Bent Neilsens Screamer]

Not read everything from this morning but a few have mentioned our game plan, I’d agree it was and did play out as we thought or hoped. You can’t legislate for a player, particularly with the experience of Digne who will play for one of the favourites at the World Cup, making an error like that.

Pre game a lot we worried about Woods physicality, he never really had a sniff.
Gibbs White was on red hot form, he was kept relatively quiet. We didn’t show much attacking intent but they were at home and didn’t show a great deal either.

Game was decided by a moment of extremely poor judgement. All still to play for UTV.

[martin o`who??]

Forgive my ignorance but Is there some fucking ridiculous penalty competition I don't know about??.

[ChicagoLion]

Sorry if this was posted earlier. Rare you hear Unai being so scathing about any officiating but he was livid at VAR for not reviewing the foul on Ollie

https://xcancel.com/footballontnt/status/2049965814975955165?s=46

Yep, tells its own story. Still goes out of his way to praise the ref, to say it wasn't his fault, to be a gent about it all, but yeah. Insane that the VAR hasn't sent the ref to the monitor over that.

I think it's the outrage over player safety that's sent him over the edge tbh. Like, reds for hairpulling but not for possible ankle-breakers? It's not right.

I agree that concern for a player's welfare makes an incident like that much more serious than just a bad decision.

Don't agree with the downplaying of hair-pulling. That can cause serious neck injuries, and should be a red card.

Fair enough, though to maintain the comparison - I don't think it's as likely to cause serious injury as going in studs-up on someone's ankle!

I don't think hairpulling has anytihng to do with being dangerous, it's just a shitty thing to do and should be an automatic red every single time, same as spitting, same as intentionally grabbing someone 'down there'.

I played rugby for 22 seasons in all that time I got 1 red card for laying 4-5 punches into a guy who pulled our fly-half back by his hair, broke 2 fingers on the c**t as well. Best thing was his team let me land a couple before stepping in to break it up and they were as angry with him as we were. He got sent off as well, and so did their captain who punched me. Only time I've punched someone since I was about 14 and had no regrets at all, the team even paid my fine.

like.

[ChicagoLion]

Forgive my ignorance but Is there some fucking ridiculous penalty competition I don't know about??.

Next Thursday 22.30 .

[Bent Neilsens Screamer]

Forgive my ignorance but Is there some fucking ridiculous penalty competition I don't know about??.

Next Thursday 22.30 .

😂

[eye digress]

Forgive my ignorance but Is there some fucking ridiculous penalty competition I don't know about??.

Next Thursday 22.30 .

Got an address for that?

[tomd2103]

On the penalty, it's the inconsistency that absolutely boils my piss.  We seem to be the only team that has had any decisions on the in/out of play thing - the only other case I can remember being remotely similar was the one a few years back where Manure scored at West Ham.  There the ball was clearly a couple of metres beyond the touchline in the air before swinging back in, yet everyone was told that VAR couldn't intervene on that one.

Football doesn't have 'hawkeye' technology on the touchlines yet, and my understanding is that in/out is still currently the decision of the on field officials.  The linesman clearly indicated for a goal kick as soon as it happened, so I don't know why VAR even intervenes at that stage.

If VAR is going to overrule officials on this, then it also needs to start being used for goal kicks and corners.  Or just f*ck the whole thing off and make the game much more enjoyable.

VAR intervenes because of a potential penalty due to Digne deciding to call for "our ball" with his hand over his head whilst it is a still in play, and I mean 2 ft in play when he starts to call for it. He doesn't do that and VAR wouldn't be having to judge if it was out and we get the goal-kick (assuming they didn't score from the pullback before the ref blows his whistle.)

As for the West Ham example, the ball was 30 feet in the air and curling, there was no way VAR could judge if it went out, the same with our Brentford one which was a guess and shouldn't have been changed with the angles they didn't have. But in this case with the camera level with the line it is a simple and valid call to say it didn't go out so penalty.

Don't want to labour the point, but surely the process you mention in the first paragraph is not right?  The initial decision was clearly given as a goal kick and therefore how can VAR overturn that?  Think of the Rogers decision at Old Trafford last season - replays clearly showed it wasn't a foul, but we were told the decision couldn't be overturned once it had been made.  Struggling to see the difference.

Two semi-finals against two Marinakis teams and some highly questionable officiating in both.  Just saying.

[Bully2345]

It's very easy to be negative about the performance and our chances but I would have taken a draw before the game. I also feared the worst at 0-1 with 20 to go and was happy to come away 0-1.

I genuinely think Forest have made an error. They settled for 1-0 and we were there for the taking. Villa are a different team at home

[Bully2345]

On the penalty, it's the inconsistency that absolutely boils my piss.  We seem to be the only team that has had any decisions on the in/out of play thing - the only other case I can remember being remotely similar was the one a few years back where Manure scored at West Ham.  There the ball was clearly a couple of metres beyond the touchline in the air before swinging back in, yet everyone was told that VAR couldn't intervene on that one.

Football doesn't have 'hawkeye' technology on the touchlines yet, and my understanding is that in/out is still currently the decision of the on field officials.  The linesman clearly indicated for a goal kick as soon as it happened, so I don't know why VAR even intervenes at that stage.

If VAR is going to overrule officials on this, then it also needs to start being used for goal kicks and corners.  Or just f*ck the whole thing off and make the game much more enjoyable.

VAR intervenes because of a potential penalty due to Digne deciding to call for "our ball" with his hand over his head whilst it is a still in play, and I mean 2 ft in play when he starts to call for it. He doesn't do that and VAR wouldn't be having to judge if it was out and we get the goal-kick (assuming they didn't score from the pullback before the ref blows his whistle.)

As for the West Ham example, the ball was 30 feet in the air and curling, there was no way VAR could judge if it went out, the same with our Brentford one which was a guess and shouldn't have been changed with the angles they didn't have. But in this case with the camera level with the line it is a simple and valid call to say it didn't go out so penalty.

Don't want to labour the point, but surely the process you mention in the first paragraph is not right?  The initial decision was clearly given as a goal kick and therefore how can VAR overturn that?  Think of the Rogers decision at Old Trafford last season - replays clearly showed it wasn't a foul, but we were told the decision couldn't be overturned once it had been made.  Struggling to see the difference.

Two semi-finals against two Marinakis teams and some highly questionable officiating in both.  Just saying.

The Rogers goal couldn't be given because the whistle had blown and the ball was officially dead before it rolled over the line.

The referee hadn't blown a whistle last night. He'd need very quick reactions to have done so

[SaddVillan]

4 semi-finals under Emery.
4 defeats.

Mmmm

Still angry about last night's result. The performance wasn't that bad.

We looked good with Onana on the pitch, but VAR (and the lack of it cost us).

Anderson should have at least had a yellow for his foul on Ollie. With a yellow he might either have been hooked, or becone less effective to avoid the chance of getting a wnd yellow.

Fair enough with the pen, but Watkins should have tucked that chance away in the 2nd half.

My fear for next week is that Forest will just park the bus and try and beat us on the break.

Abraham is good in the air - play him alongside Watkins and get plenty of crosses into their 6yd area?