I don’t want to do this round up to be honest. Not after the derby. Would have been ok if there were no midweek games and I was just writing about the weekend, but midweek has proper put a massive downer on it all and made me want to just forget all about footy, as much as its humanly possible for someone who writes about it for a living anyway.
You probably don't want to read about it either, which is fair enough. Watching these other games and writing about them isn’t going to be much fun so I wouldn’t be expecting the usual fun and nonsense this week, although I’ll try.
I’ll start at Goodison where the Blues overcame Forest with considerable help from Anthony Taylor to all but secure their safety. They followed it up with a win over some other bum team in midweek to put the seal on their survival, but the less said about that the better.
The game with Forest was frankly ridiculous. I understand Forest’s anger but can’t get on board with the response, or who they directed their anger at. All three of those were penalties, and two of them were absolute stonewallers. But Stuart Atwell isn’t the villain of this story. No, it’s the baldies who are to blame here. Taylor failed to give all three, which is very weird as to keep turning down penalty appeals is unusual. Generally if you’ve not given one close one then you’ll give the next close one. And if you’ve turned down two then you’ll definitely give the third.
Atwell supporting Luton has nothing to do with him not intervening though. That’s on Chief Inspector Baldy and what he’s instructed his goon squad to do. Overturns on penalty decisions are very rare, VAR rarely interferes (unless it’s Oliver helping out City) and Atwell’s allegiance - which I agree should have ruled him out of the game - was irrelevant. You could have had Stuart Pearce and Des Walker in the VAR room but if they were acting how Webb wants them to then they’d stay out of it.
Ashley Old got away with murder, and being the twat that he’s always been he couldn’t help but gloat about it afterwards. Smirking in his MOTD interview and saying they weren’t penalties because the ref didn’t give them, and then posting “Cry me a river” on Instagram the next day. Like I say, always been a twat him.
Forest’s owner is a fucking moron though. The tweet was embarrassing. Even though there was a legitimate cause for complaint in there, the way they did immediately turned a lot of people away from their cause. The statement they put out the next day is what they should have done to begin with, but the owner is a hothead and you know that came from him. The rumour doing the rounds is he wanted to do it at half time and was talked out of it by the social media team.
Clattenberg is a tit as well, but his poacher turned gamekeeper thing (or maybe the reverse actually) is interesting in the sense that he knows these refs, he knows how they think and he knows what goes on. He seems convinced Forest are being fucked over and I do wonder if he’s got some sort of inside track on that. Or maybe he’s just Pat Garrett with a whistle.
If Forest are so concerned about corruption though they might want to start by checking their keeper’s bank account for payments from Evert… actually no, scratch that. Everton don’t have enough cash to pay their own staff let alone someone else’s. The keeper’s attempts to stop those two long range pea roller goals though was pathetic. Went down line a roll of lino.
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