Kevin Nolan 'can't accept' Premier League referee's display in Rotherham defeat
Kevin Nolan says he ‘can’t accept’ the standard of officiating in Saturday’s defeat to Rotherham from a referee who is set to take charge of Premier League games this season.
Tierney has been a top flight referee since 2018 but suffered a long-term injury last season and is currently working his way back to the Premier League. He had refereed three EFL games this season before taking charge at Sixfields on Saturday, but neither set of fans or players were left particularly happy with his performance come full-time.
Sam Hoskins saw an early goal wrongly ruled out for offside before he then scored a penalty, won contentiously by Kamarai Swyer, while Josh Benson’s winner came from a harsh free-kick against Michael Jacobs. Not only that, Jacobs looked to have been fouled himself 20 seconds earlier.
"It's not a free-kick and I've said to Paul he should know that,” said Nolan. “He's a better referee than that. It's not an excuse because we weren’t good enough today but I'm really disappointed with the officials to be honest.
"It's a very poor decision for Sam's goal from the corner. We work hard all week on those things and that should be one of the easy ones because he's standing there and he doesn't have to move to see it. You expect them to get those ones right.
"Was it a soft penalty? Probably. But you see them given all of the time and that could have put us 2-0 up at the time, and then, at the end, it's a free-kick on Crackers. He's nearly chest high. It doesn't matter if he's kicked the ball, he's kicked him in the stomach.”
Nolan, who was keen to stress that his side were deservedly beaten by Rotherham regardless of certain decisions, did not come out straightaway for his post-match interview afterwards.
"I wanted to have a look back at the decisions," he explained. "I thought he got them wrong when I was watching from the touchline and I still think he got them wrong after watching the video.
"I’m not going to harp on about it but we'll see Paul and we'll speak to the referees because we want to try and help them get better. You expect someone of his ability to not make those mistakes. I can take it from the linesman because this is his level but I'm not accepting it from someone who is going be in the Premier League in a few weeks.”