Jamie Carragher is right - Nottingham Forest's PGMOL outburst showed a real lack of 'class'

There are certain public figures who, if they are to be appreciated at all in this, the year 2024, necessitate an effort to separate the art from the artist; Roald Dahl, Morrissey, Hulk Hogan. Even Jamie Carragher.

Now, for the sake of clarity, I do not believe that the former-Liverpool-defender-turned-pundit-extraordinaire is a bad person comparable with the likes of Dahl, Morrissey, Hogan (the world’s worst insurance firm) - all provable bigots of various persuasions. Nobody is saying Carragher falls anywhere near that category. He does, however, have a tendency to get over-excited, and to wound himself in the process. We saw it when he spat on that child. We saw it when he made that recent ill-judged joke about Kate Abdo’s fidelity. But by and large, when push comes to shove, you stick a microphone in his hand, and Carra will deliver a measured, rational, and nuanced take.

So it proved on Sunday. As supporters and officials and social media admins lost their heads all around him, the Sky Sports mouthpiece kept his and spoke with lucidity and sense about the outrage that engulfed Nottingham Forest’s costly 2-0 defeat at the hands of Everton.

In that relegation six-pointer, Forest were denied a number of penalty shouts that they deemed to be concrete. And how do we know that they deemed them to be concrete? Well, because they told us themselves in a hastily-published and drippingly-venomous statement on social media.

‘Three extremely poor decisions,’ it reads, ‘three penalties not given - which we simply cannot accept. We warned the PGMOL 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.’ It is one step removed from the kind of status your attention-seeking aunt might put on Facebook twice monthly; ‘Sick of people. Too many snakes in my life’, she hammers into her keyboard. ‘U ok hun? Msg me’, her best friend Sharon replies.

Responding to Forest’s post live on air, Carragher said: “It tells you where we are with the Premier League now and the clubs. Stuart Attwell and Anthony Taylor have had a horrific day today, awful, and they should be rightly criticised for that and that could have real implications for Nottingham Forest.

“I get the frustration, but that, what I’ve just read there on social media, that’s like a fan in a pub. That is embarrassing from Nottingham Forest. I get the frustration. That rubbish that VAR’s a Luton fan – you can’t get involved in that, you’ve got to show a little bit of class if you’re a football club. I get it, the frustration – the officials had an awful day, terrible – but you can’t get involved in that, that’s nonsense.”

Would it shock you if I told you that there has been a backlash? That people, mainly from Nottinghamshire, took to the internet to suggest that it is a bit rich for a man who, as we have previously mentioned, once gobbed on a minor to talk about the concept of ‘class’ and general decorum? Perhaps not.

But here’s the thing, if we can separate the transgressions of Past Carra from his work in the present day, just for a moment, he isn’t actually wrong. Yes, Forest have every right to be aggrieved, and if they feel as if they have exhausted all of the traditional avenues of communication with the PGMOL then it is understandable to an extent that their frustration has bubbled over in the manner that it did on Sunday.

That being said, does anybody at the City Ground truly believe that this is the way to enact effective change? Is a bitterly worded snipe from the shadows of the metaverse the smartest method of winning over hearts and minds - especially those of a governing body you have just accused of, at best, negligence, and at worst, downright corruption? Maybe. But also, probably not.

Carragher recognises this, and that is all he is trying to convey. Forest might have been wronged, but two wrongs rarely make a right. And if you don’t believe me on that point, then believe Jamie Carragher, a man who, away from his enviable punditry résumé, has developed quite the knack for worsening through overly rash knee jerk reactions.