Gary Neville has chimed in with his take on the fallout from Liverpool’s winning goal against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on Saturday, which left the home side furious.
Darwin Nunez’s 99th-minute winner prompted some of Nuno Espirito Santo’s players to surround Paul Tierney straight after the final whistle, with their chairman Evangelos Marinakis also coming onto the pitch to get involved.
Their ire stemmed from referee to return the ball to the hosts after stopping the play when Ibrahima Konate went down with a head injury, with the visitors striking for the decisive goal 110 seconds later.
Speaking on the Gary Neville Podcast, the ex-Manchester United defender rejected Mike Dean’s suggestion that the on-field official committed a ‘monumental error’, and also hit out at Mark Clattenburg – who now holds a refereeing analysis role with Forest – for proclaiming that Tierney’s error was ‘difficult to explain’.
The Sky Sports pundit said: “There is no doubt the Nottingham Forest player is in possession but the goal came a minute and 50 [seconds] after that. Two minutes in football is an absolute age.
“The idea that it was a ‘monumental error’… I get the fact it was a mistake, a frustration, but I get the feeling now that we’re making too much out of what I feel is a run-of-the-mill error. You see them quite regularly in a season.”
Neville added: “The owner on the pitch and the Mark Clattenburg nonsense, I can’t buy into. I feel we are pushing the boundaries, and inciting anger and hate towards referees [with] some of the action clubs are taking.
“To me, it’s an error. It’s just a mistake. We don’t know Liverpool wouldn’t have scored anyway. At the moment, we need to show a bit of restraint. I don’t feel it’s as bad as we’re making out.”
First of all, we acknowledge that Tierney got it wrong by not returning the ball to Forest for the restart after Konate’s head injury. However, for anyone to suggest that Liverpool got lucky over the official’s error would be firing at the wrong target.
Even if the home side were correctly given the opportunity to restart play just outside our penalty area, there’s no guarantee that they would’ve scored from it.
Also, as Neville (and others) have rightly pointed out, there was more than enough time between the match resuming and Nunez scoring for Forest to have dealt with any danger that we could pose, and they paid the price for their failure to clear from a corner rather than a mistake by the referee.
While some Liverpool fans may feel a sense of payback given Tierney’s history with controversial decisions going against us, two wrongs don’t make a right when it comes to officials making basic errors.
The 43-year-old isn’t at fault for Forest losing on Saturday, and he certainly didn’t hand us the win on a silver platter like some social media users have complained, but you’d hope that he and his colleagues will learn from the incident and not repeat it during the run-in to a hugely competitive season at both ends of the Premier League table.
I think a bigger issue here is that no one is calling out the comments made by the likes of Clattenberg and Dean. For Dean to say the error led to Liverpool scoring is factually incorrect, as possession turned over 3 times and a throwing and corner all took place before Darwin scored. Additionally, the fact that the self same thing happened in reverse earlier in the half when a Harvey Ellishot hit a Forest player in the face, only for the ball to be presented (unchallenged) to the Forest goalkeeper, was not only ignored by all the coverage, but amazingly was ignored on MOTD who appear to now live in the same click bait world as all of the rest of the rabid gutter press.
MoTD – Shearer loathes Liverpool and Jenas is from Nottingham
What else do you expect?
Perhaps Hudson Odoi or Aeoniyi should have cleared the ball or someone mark Nunez. All too quick to delfect their own mistakes – plus 5 mins wastingh time for their GK – who stood up and took the GK and then was seen sprinting 30 seconfs later. So who’s cheating here then?
Very well put mate. Forest will feel bad Abt the situation but they had 90+ mins to get a result.
Common sense tells you the direction of play will have been different if the ball was given to N F..this longtime after an error is nonsense, Neville was a good talented defender ,But he has failed to understand football on the screen ,thats why he failed dismally as a coach ..Now he is paid to just open his mouth.
Gary is very spot on.
Man United are not the same level like my team Liverpool so I don’t Gary and Keen don’t see that thy have blinkers on why that two coach Man U thy talk to must because Gary don’t like Liverpool