Nottingham Forest feel they “need to stand up for ourselves more” over poor refereeing performances.
On the back of last Sunday's 2-2 draw with Everton, the club have submitted a dossier to the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOL). It came after head coach Steve Cooper blasted referee John Brooks’ performance against the Toffees, saying he had “too much impact on the game”.
The Reds were particularly incensed by the decision to award a free-kick in the visitors' favour, which led to their second goal, rather than for a foul on Morgan Gibbs-White. It is among a number of calls against Forest which have come under scrutiny this season.
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Former Premier League referee Howard Webb has been visiting clubs in his role as the PGMOL’s first chief refereeing officer. Cooper says Forest have now followed his encouragement to provide “feedback” - not all of which is negative.
"We haven't heard anything back yet. We have submitted some feedback. I'm quite happy to do that. It's something the PGMOL are encouraging," he said.
“Like every club, we had a visit from Howard Webb and some of his staff members four to six weeks ago. But that was a normal visit that he’s been doing in his new role. One of the things he was really encouraging was feedback.
"We have submitted how we're feeling at the moment, as feedback. It's the first time we've done it this season.
"It's the first time the club has made a call, whether it's through me or the sporting director or even more executive than that. It's the first time we've done that.
"We're not a club that feeds back every single game, every single week. We're certainly not complaining, we want to feedback 1) in some reflections and 2) to have a good relationship to help, and that's where we're at.
“We have talked internally about, do we need to toughen up a bit? Do we need to stand up for ourselves a little bit more?
“I don’t know what other clubs do, so I don't know if we do more or less than others. What I do know is we’re in a situation where we feel like we need to say something about how we’re feeling.
“But it’s not just a call and a moan. It’s with some detailed footage and data.
“And it’s not all negative. We would never, after one game be really disappointed with the referee’s performance and that would cause a big complaint - that would be narrow-minded. It’s got to be general over a course of time and a period of games, like you’d judge maybe me and the team.
“We do have to stand our ground and stand up for ourselves, but we want to do it in a respectful way. But at the same time, we don’t want to get walked over either.
"We’ve just said how we feel at the moment. We've done it with detail, we’ve had some good discussions and let everything settle from the game. We didn’t do anything on the day, we actually took a couple of days to really think about the approach. And we fed back. That's all it is, feedback.
“It doesn’t have to be all negative, when Howard Webb came in it was a really positive meeting. Let’s all try to help.”
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