Following Sky Sports’ coverage of a social media post in which the club questioned Stuart Attwell’s nomination as referee for one of their games, Nottingham Forest has filed a lawsuit against the broadcaster.
The revelation comes after Gary Neville seemed to retract remarks he made on Friday night, urging former referee Mark Clattenburg to step down from his position at the City Ground in the wake of the contentious statement, which Sky Sports decided to remove from their website.
According to those close to Sky Sports, the decision to remove the article was made solely for editorial purposes and had nothing to do with a pending legal dispute.
It was disclosed last month that Forest was thinking of suing Sky for publishing the now-famous remark on X, the former name for Twitter.
Additionally, Mail Sport has discovered that the item was taken down after Forest sent a legal notice to Sky Sports in response to their answer to what happened after their 2-0 loss to Everton on April 21.
Following the defeat at the hands of Sean Dyche’s team, the club issued a contentious statement in which they disclosed that they had raised concerns about Attwell’s appointment as the match VAR with the referees body PGMOL due to his support of Luton Town, the team’s relegation opponents.
After that, at Goodison Park, Forest was refused what they thought to be three penalties, and Attwell neglected to send on-field referee Anthony Taylor to his pitchside monitor to look over any of the occurrences. This week, Webb acknowledged that one of the three occurrences merited an award.
In February, Clattenburg took up a consultancy role with Forest with the intention of helping players and staff understand better the workings of VAR and how decisions are made. He resigned from his position on Friday, news first revealed by Mail Sport.
At the time Neville called on Clattenburg to stand down from his job with Forest.
After Forest’s social media post, which has been viewed 45 million times, Neville said: ‘Mark Clattenburg must resign tonight. If he saw those words go out which question the integrity of a referee and claims someone is a cheat for supporting another club then he’s supporting what is being said.
‘He would lose all credibility with referees in the game. He should stand down tonight and distance himself from that statement.’
Neville continued: ‘It’s like a mafia-gang statement. I mean, honestly, what the hell are they playing at? It’s like a petulant child, it’s embarrassing.
‘And some of those things they’re saying in there, the suggestion of some sort of inferring of cheating because there’s an official in VAR in Stockley Park who’s a Luton fan is a scandal, and they will pay for that.’
Neville’s comments caused outrage at Forest and ahead of Luton’s 1-1 draw with Everton on Friday night Neville, when asked for his thoughts on Clattenburg’s decision to stand down, appeared to suggest he hadn’t called for the ex-Premier League official to resign.
He said: ‘I’m not surprised at all [that Clattenburg has resigned].
‘I thought that after the statement that Nottingham Forest made, I don’t think any of us ask for people to resign.
‘We don’t do that, we’re obviously critical at times because that’s the job we’re in. But to ask for people to resign is a very serious step and a severe step.’
A page with the headline: ‘Gary Neville: Mark Clattenburg resignation not surprising – “Forest made his job untenable”’ was posted on the Sky Sports website after the pundit’s comments.
However, the story carrying Neville’s latest remarks have since been taken down from the Sky Sports website.
