Nottingham Forest ordered to delete extraordinary post that followed Everton defeat as £750k fine appeal lost

Nottingham Forest ordered to delete extraordinary post that followed Everton defeat as £750k fine appeal lost

Nottingham Forest were given the demand after they lost an appeal to an FA case surrounding controversial social media posts made last season

Referee Anthony Taylor is confronted by Chris Wood and Callum Hudson-Odoi of Nottingham Forest during their 2-0 defeat at Everton last season (Image: Alex Livesey/Getty Images )

Nottingham Forest have been ordered to remove a viral social media post that slammed decisions made in the club’s defeat to Everton last season. Forest had penalty appeals waved away as they lost what, in April of last year, was a crucial relegation battle between two teams who had been hit with points deductions for breaching Premier League spending rules.

Minutes after the final whistle, Forest’s official account on X, formerly Twitter , slammed the penalty decisions and drew reference to the fact the Video Assistant Referee had been Stuart Attwell, a supporter of Luton Town, another club in the relegation battle.

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Comments released online, and viewed millions of times, included: “Three extremely poor decisions – three penalties not given – which we simply cannot accept. We warned the PGMOL [the referees’ organisation] that the VAR is a Luton fan before the game but they didn’t change him. Our patience has been tested multiple times. NFFC will now consider its options.”

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Forest were fined £750,000 and warned after being found to have committed improper conduct following an FA probe. An appeal against that decision has now been dismissed - and the club has been told to remove the post at the centre of the disciplinary prosecution.

Forest, who had apologised to neither Attwell nor the FA, had claimed the commission that heard the case had adopted a “perverse” interpretation of the club’s comments and that their true meaning was not to suggest Attwell was biased but instead “no more than a protest at the appearance of bias created by the appointment of a Luton fan to the fixture”.

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The appeals panel rejected this, however - highlighting the complaints were made public after Attwell’s controversial decisions and not following his appointment to a role within the fixture. It ruled: “On the face of the tweet, there was plainly an implied allegation of actual bias.”

Forest also appealed against the severity of the fine, but lost that argument too. While the panel said it may have handed out a smaller fine, and called on the FA to create guidelines to help such punishments be calculated, it said it had not been convinced it should be reduced.

Ultimately, it found: “A heavy penalty was entirely merited for this very serious offence… To allege that a match official’s decision is infected by actual bias against or in favour of one of the teams is an allegation of behaviour that undermines the foundations on which competitive sport is based.

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“It is particularly serious in the case of professional football and even more so in relation to decisions made in a crucial fixture which is likely to determine issues such as promotion and relegation to or from the Premier League where the stakes are extremely high.”

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