Nottingham Forest were at the centre of more controversy involving VAR in their 1-1 draw against Ipswich Town on Friday night.

Neco Williams fired Forest into the lead in the first half with a brilliant goal after strong work down the right from Daniel Munoz. Ipswich equalised near the interval when Julio Enciso capitalised on a poor pass from Nikola Milenkovic.

Still, Forest ended their run of three straight defeats with a solid point on their travels. Now, Oliver Glasner has to go to Brentford with the intention of winning the game ahead of facing Manchester City before the international break.

VAR couldn’t stay out of the spotlight, however, and a former FIFA referee believes that Tom Bramall tied himself in knots during the contest after failing to send off Issa Diop.

Keith Hackett thinks Forest were unlucky

Hackett has once again defended Forest after another incident that they’ve been on the wrong side of, with Issa Diop escaping with a yellow card after seemingly denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity on James McAtee.

Hackett believes that Bramall got the decision wrong and Diop should have seen red, with McAtee’s next touch likely to have been a shot at goal.

He told Football Insider: “Thomas Bramall, why didn’t you listen to VAR? Why didn’t you act? Why didn’t you listen to VAR? This was a clear and obvious error.

“The denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity was in fact fulfilled. The players’ likelihood of controlling the ball, no defenders likely to come in, and amazingly, someone has stated that the direction of play is away from the goal. No, it is not!

“If you take away the defender in the thought process of your decision-making as the referee, you can see that the player is in control and he’s heading for goal and he’s going to get a shot away. That is sufficient to fulfil the law. They’ve got the film strips in front of them, and amazingly, he said no and stuck with the original decision; it was wrong, and he should have been sent off.”

They say that decisions, when it comes to match officials, are evened out over the course of a season. However, with how this season is going from Forest’s point of view, the Reds are owed about three or four calls already.

This decision looked pretty straightforward once it had gone to VAR, but ultimately, Forest didn’t get the chance to play the majority of the second half against 10 men, and that could have been pivotal.