Tottenham escaped the City Ground with a point, but the story of the night belonged to a chalked-off Neco Williams goal that Nottingham Forest manager Oliver Glasner insisted should have stood. Williams headed in on the goalline in the 67th minute, only for VAR to overturn the effort for handball, and Glasner said the evidence was too flimsy to justify it.
Williams stooped to nod the ball home as Sandro Tonali tried to hack it clear following Morgan Gibbs-White’s deflected shot. Referee Craig Pawson pointed to the centre circle first, then went to the pitchside monitor after VAR official Peter Bankes flagged the incident, and reversed his decision – awarding Spurs a free-kick instead as home fans jeered.
Glasner said he’d gone through five or six replays and could only guess, at best, that the ball clipped Williams’s arm, since the footage didn’t clarify whether it was the ball or Tonali’s touch causing the shirt movement. He argued that clubs had been told before the season that the bar for VAR intervention should be set high, and felt this call undermined that principle rather than reinforcing the referee’s authority.
Williams was just as adamant, insisting he’d headed the ball down between his arms and that no single freeze-frame showed clear contact with his hand.
A blunt night for Spurs, too
None of it should obscure how toothless Tottenham were. They failed to manage a single shot on target and have now gone three straight league games without scoring, a run that will sharpen scrutiny of De Zerbi’s approach up front. Both sides remain winless, with Spurs hosting Everton next and Forest away at Aston Villa – fixtures that now carry rather more weight.
The wider debate here is a familiar one: current handball law says a goal must be ruled out if the ball touches the scorer’s arm immediately before it goes in, regardless of intent, which is precisely why marginal contact like this proves so combustible whenever it’s scrutinised frame by frame.
