Nottingham Forest kept their faint hopes of a Champions League place alive going into the last round of Premier League fixtures with a victory over West Ham United.
The London Stadium was flat throughout the game as the curtain came down on the 2024/25 campaign from a home perspective for the Hammers, with a rather drab performance.
Morgan Gibbs-White and Nikola Milenkovic scored the Forest goals as the Reds looked really comfortable at 2-0, but as is often the case, West Ham roared back and set up a grandstand finish when Jarrod Bowen pulled one back.
Forest did stand firm, however, and saw the game out impeccably well, limiting the Hammers to one speculative header which Matz Sels saved late in the piece.
Premier League release statement after Nikola Milenkovic goal was allowed to stand
It felt like an eternity from Milenkovic nodding home to the game restarting and seven minutes is far too long for these things to be ironed out at the elite level.
Forest were adamant that the goal should stand and ultimately, the correct conclusion was reached, with the Reds being allowed to keep the goal on their tally.
It makes a mockery of the game at the top level, however, and something has to be done to ensure that things are done at a much quicker pace in the future.
After the game, the Premier League released a statement explaining why the goal was allowed to stand via their social media channel.
It claimed: “”The referee’s call of goal was checked and confirmed by VAR – with Milenkovic in an onside position and Domínguez in an offside position, but deemed not to be impacting on play.
“The semi-automated offside technology was not available to the VAR in this incident. There were also issues with the VAR communications to the on-field officials.”
Jamie Carragher unhappy with bizarre VAR call in Forest win over West Ham
The Reds were forced to wait anxiously for a full seven minutes after Milenkovic had powered home a brilliant free-kick from Anthony Elanga in the second half of the game.
Milenkovic was quite clearly onside, but Nicolas Dominguez had strayed offside, and despite being nowhere near any of the West Ham players, Darren England chose to leave the Reds waiting for a thorough VAR check.
Carragher couldn’t quite believe what he was watching on co-commentary and took offence at the amount of time that a seemingly straightforward decision took to be confirmed.
He said: “”I mean, the reason we’re not talking is we’re listening to the VAR and trying to get any more information. Ultimately, they’ve got the right decision, but it’s just a bit of a mess and it took far too long.”
At the end of the day, it’s infuriating for fans when they’re forced to wait and blindly try to decifer what the referees are even looking at, with Milenkovic quite clearly onside in this instance.
VAR has become no clearer this season and frankly, the vast majority of fans would now surely love to see the whole thing scrapped, even if it does feel as though the technology is here to stay.
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