Former referee Mike Dean has admitted that Paul Tierney made a ‘monumental error’ ahead of Liverpool\’s late winner against Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
Darwin Nunez scored the only goal of the game deep into stoppage time, with Liverpool winning 1-0 to aid their title challenge.
However, much of the post-game analysis focused on Tierney following an incident involving Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher.
Play had stopped after a head injury to Liverpool defender Ibrahima Konate as Callum Hudson-Odoi was set to send in a cross for Forest.
After Konate recovered quickly, Kelleher restarted play but ended up finding a team-mate rather than giving the ball back to Forest.
Liverpool eventually managed to find the net, with substitute Nunez scoring.
Even though there was a significant amount of time between the incident and the goal, Dean feels that Tiernety should have intervened earlier.
Dean told Sky Sports: ‘Obviously Nottingham Forest are upset, I would have been upset if I was involved with Nottingham Forest as well, but unfortunately for the referee he’s made a monumental error. I think he’ll know this morning that he’s made a mistake and hopefully he can rectify that in the future.’
‘Unfortunately for Paul it is a mistake and it’s a bad one as well, it obviously leads to a goal eventually.
‘The law states that whoever has the ball when the play does stop, the ball goes back to them. Hudson-Odoi clearly had the ball and the ball and the ball should have been dropped to Nottingham Forest on the wing.
‘I know they went and scored Liverpool, it wasn’t directly from the drop ball, it’s close enough two minutes afterwards so it’s a big timescale in between.’
Dean said that a statement should have been issued after the game admitting that a mistake was made.
However, Dean added that the scenes that saw Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis confront Tierney after the game weren’t welcome.
Dean stated that it is important to avoid a repeat of the incident in Turkey in December when Ankaragucu president Faruk Koca stormed on the pitch after the final whistle of a draw against Rizespor.
Koca punched referee Halil Umut Meler in the face, with others then laying into him.
He said: ‘The whistle went maybe a second too late for Paul, it should have gone back to Forest and then it’s just one of those things that transpires.
It gets dropped to Liverpool wrongly, they go and score some two minutes later after a throw-in and a chance to clear by Forest.’
‘It’s a mistake, we all know it’s a mistake, it does need somebody to come out straight after the game and say it’s a mistake.
The chairman was on the pitch, we don’t want to see things like that happening. We saw what happened in Turkey a couple of months ago where a referee got assaulted. We don\’t need scenes like that after the game.’