\n<\/p>\n
Aston Villa manager Unai Emery was highly critical of the video assistant referee for not sending off Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson in two impassioned rants after his side’s <\/b>1-0 loss in the first leg<\/b> of their Europa League semi-final.<\/b><\/p>\n
Anderson avoided punishment for a first-half sliding tackle in which he won the ball but then caught the ankle of Ollie Watkins with a high, studs-up challenge.<\/p>\n
Referee Joao Pinheiro did not take action – and there was only what appeared to be a very brief VAR review before the incident was cleared.<\/p>\n
Forest would go on to win through a VAR-awarded penalty which Chris Wood scored – but Emery accepted that decision.<\/p>\n
“Fantastic, the referee, fantastic,” Emery told TNT Sports. “But the VAR is so, so bad. It’s a clear red card – I don’t understand why the VAR is not calling the referee because it’s so clear. <\/p>\n
“And it’s very, very important. It’s a huge, huge mistake. VAR is responsible.<\/p>\n
“The referee – fantastic, fantastic job, 10 out of 10. I appreciated how he managed the match for 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
“But I watched it back – wow. Huge. He could break his ankle. Wow, VAR – where are you? Please. It is your responsibility, we are professionals. You are doing very bad work because it was so clear for everybody [to see]. He could break his ankle.<\/p>\n
“I respect the referees always but VAR, I don’t understand. It’s not fair.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Aston Villa manager Unai Emery was highly critical of the video assistant referee for not sending off Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson in two impassioned rants after his side’s 1-0 loss in the first leg of their Europa League semi-final. Anderson avoided punishment for a first-half sliding tackle in which he won the ball but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}