The Football Association (FA) have upheld a £750,000 fine for Nottingham Forest following a social media post which questioned the integrity of official Stuart Attwell after the side’s Premier League loss at Everton in April 2024.
In October, an independent regulatory commission imposed the fine after it determined that the club’s post was “ill-chosen and irresponsible” and constituted improper conduct, as it implied actual bias against video assistant referee (VAR) Attwell.
The commission had also highlighted Forest’s lack of “genuine apology” and “genuine remorse” for the post, which they ordered be removed from their social media platforms, while the club were also warned by the panel over their conduct.
The FA had initially sought a fine in excess of £1million over what they said was the club’s “egregious, direct and public attack”.
Forest’s appeal in relation to both liability and sanction against was dismissed by the Appeal Board.
Forest issued the highly critical post on social media around five minutes after full-time of their Premier League defeat at Goodison Park, which left the club one point above the relegation zone at the time.
The club argued they had wanted to “start a debate about the potential difficulty” of the game’s VAR official Attwell, who they alleged supported the club’s relegation rival Luton Town.
Forest posted that Attwell’s appointment brought the “potential for unconscious or perceived/apparent bias was an issue that needed to be addressed in the wider interests of the game”.
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Forest said they had “warned” the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOL) that “the VAR is a Luton fan but they didn’t change him”.
“Three extremely poor decisions — three penalties not given — which we simply cannot accept,” the club said on their social media account, in a post that was subsequently deleted following instruction from the FA. “Our patience has been tested multiple times.”
The FA noted how the initial, post-game tweet was viewed nearly 40 million times in less than 24 hours from its publication.
Forest had been left aggrieved after referee Anthony Taylor failed to award three penalties during their 2-0 loss to Everton, and VAR Attwell opted not to overrule the decisions.
The commission had accepted the game was “fraught with controversy” while former referee Howard Webb later said that in the opinion of PGMOL, the decision to refuse the third penalty was a mistake and that a penalty should have been awarded and/or the VAR should have intervened to advise to that effect.
However, the Appeal Board said that the event was “wholly unprecedented” and upheld the original verdict on the club, with costs to be paid by March 12.
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Nottingham Forest, Stuart Attwell’s Luton link and a melodrama played out on social media
(Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
