Wolves 0 Bournemouth 1
It’s not football anymore.
A cry from the stand that felt appropriate on a few levels.
On the one hand, this struggling Wolves side are a long way off the standards they set earlier in the season. Besides a brief resurgence in the second half, inspired by the introductions of Cunha and Traore, it was a pretty abhorrent display that should have yielded a heavier scoreline for the visitors.
The only reason that wasn’t the case was another impressive display from Sa, whose upturn in form has unfortunately coincided with a decline in that of his outfield peers.
While the two disallowed goals would indicate a tight game, the truth is that a solid but unspectacular Bournemouth team never needed to get out of second gear to get the job done.
There is, of course, a bigger issue to address.
Stuart Atwell’s comically bad decision to chalk off Hwang’s equaliser has to go down as one of the worst of the season.
If that’s a foul by Cunha, then we may as well take up another sport. While a disingenuous apology from the PGMOL will doubtlessly be forthcoming, it’ll do nothing to dispel the notion that VAR and its administrators are prejudiced against the Premier League’s lesser lights.
Nottingham Forest copped a lot of flak for their post-game tweet on Sunday but, when you quieten the noise made by Sky Sports’ chief propagandists, would you disagree with anything they said?
They, like us and a fair few other teams, have been subjected to a litany of bad decisions all season and are paying the price for it.
In any other line of work, such ineptitude would be addressed but the powers that be in the self-proclaimed ‘best league in the world’ are either too stubborn or corrupt to backtrack on the rancid state of play they have enforced.
What this means for the beautiful game’s long-term future remains to be seen, but I, like many of you I suspect, can’t wait for a break from it.