The City Ground pitch is one of the widest in the top flight, measuring roughly 78 yards across.
As he attempted to decide whether Nicolo Savona had managed to keep the ball in play, assistant referee Akil Howson not only had the entire field between where he stood and the Nottingham Forest player, but also the not insignificant matter of a goal and the net standing between him.
At the Bridgford End of the stadium, Italian defender Savona had prevented the ball from going out of bounds, but only by a small margin. A matter of one or two inches at most.
Within seconds, television replays in the City Ground press box showed clearly that a goal kick should have been awarded. Even before it was taken, thousands of people suspected it was the wrong call. Hundreds — those who could see the television screens in the Peter Taylor Stand — knew for certain that it was.
Yet, in a game in the biggest league in the world, the decision was left to be made by a man with an impaired view of the incident.
The frustration of the home fans — and of their manager — was entirely justified. In two Premier League games in charge, Dyche has found himself on the wrong end of two painfully similar decisions.
But while they were understandable, the chorus of jeers and boos that were aimed at the match officials at half-time, as Forest made their way down the tunnel 1-0 down — courtesy of a Casemiro header that came from the resulting corner — were directed at the wrong people.
Most in the 30,778 crowd would have struggled to make the call without some degree of guesswork. The controversy is not that this was a refereeing error, but that it was one that could so easily have been corrected in a matter of seconds.
Forest can be questioned for the quality of their defending at Bournemouth and against United.
Extra salt was rubbed into the wound when Marcus Tavernier scored directly from the corner at Bournemouth, given that he — and not Forest defender Neco Williams — had applied the final touch before the ball went out of play.
Goalkeeper Matz Sels will know that he could have been stronger on the south coast, and at the City Ground six days later, Casemiro was allowed the freedom to plant a simple header beyond Sels for United. Forest have gone 18 Premier League games without keeping a clean sheet — now the worst run in all four of the top divisions.
But they can also make the very compelling argument that they should not have had to defend either corner in the first place.
We have moved on from the era when Forest would write a string of strongly worded letters to the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), which was a more regular occurrence when ex-Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg was working as a referee “match and performance analyst” for 77 days in the spring of 2024.
The club did not make an official complaint following the Bournemouth game and, in the immediate aftermath of the 2-2 draw with United, the initial feeling was that it was unlikely that would change.
Dyche himself has a close relationship with the head of the PGMOL, Howard Webb, and the two will likely have a conversation about these moments, rather than going through official channels. While the Forest hierarchy’s focus was very much on an improved performance, one that suggested the squad is behind Dyche in a way that they did not buy into the chaotic approach of his predecessor, Ange Postecoglou.
But as he begins a new era of his own, as manager of a club for whom every point is particularly precious as they seek to climb out of the bottom three, Dyche had an important point of his own when he urged for there to be a change in the way VAR is used.
A minimum of 28 cameras are utilised within a full Video Assistant Referee setup in the Premier League. At many clubs, the number can be even higher. Semi-automated technology can now decide in moments whether a player has strayed offside. Why are they not being utilised to make other factual, straightforward decisions?
We are not talking about the murkily grey area of whether there has been sufficient contact in the area to merit a penalty or whether a player has held on to another’s shirt for a nanosecond too long.
There is no subjectivity involved here. It is black and white. Has the ball gone out or not?
There might be reasonable concerns over the potential for too many decisions on the pitch to be re-referred and reviewed by people sat in front of a television screen in an office. We do not want a world in which the game is halted every few minutes to decide if the match officials have made the right call or not.
But why not follow the example of other sports, such as cricket or tennis — or even football in MLS — where there is an option to review a set number of decisions?
Even if each manager had the option to ask for only one to be looked at every game, it would help address moments such as this. The few additional seconds it would take would be more than worth it when there is an opportunity to get simple decisions right, not wrong.
The right team won in Bournemouth and a draw felt like a fair result yesterday, but Dyche had faced one question in his post-match press conference before he effectively cajoled a reporter into asking for his thoughts on the incident.
“Now you can ask me the inevitable… I would be surprised if that was not one of your first questions,” said Dyche. As he also pointed out, the Forest manager has been back in football for three games and, in two of those, his post-match interviews have been dominated by talk of key decisions being wrong when they simply do not have to be.
“There is a lot at stake in these games. We all just want it right. The fans want it right,” he added. “I do not want to be talking about this. I want to be talking about my team and their performance.”
When there is an opportunity to help match officials, rather than hammer them, it would surely make sense to take it.
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