PGMO reveal whether Man Utd 'handball' against Nottingham Forest was the wrong decision as update issued

Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO) head Howard Webb has confirmed that Manchester United's second goal against Nottingham Forest on Sunday should have been disallowed.

Man United had just conceded an equalising goal at Old Trafford when Matheus Cunha made it 2-1.

The Red Devils, whose place in the Champions League was already locked in, went on to win 3-2 and secure third place in the Premier League table.

Cunha's goal was mired in controversy. Teammate Bryan Mbeumo controlled the ball with his arm, albeit inadvertently, and it seemed inevitable that the goal would be ruled out despite the possibility that it had deflected off another part of his body first.

Technicality or not, this was simply too much of a handball.

The extraordinary decision not to scrub the goal from the scoresheet was taken by match referee Michael Salisbury despite reviewing the incident at pitchside on the advice of video assistant referee Matthew Donohue.

Former United defender Gary Neville described the decision as a 'shocker' and Webb has moved quickly to add PGMO's official voice to those criticising the referee's decision.

"Webb rang Forest personally today to acknowledge the error and concede that, in this situation, a better decision would have been for Salisbury to overturn his initial decision," reports The Athletic.

United's opponents were already safe from relegation so the sporting impact of the erroneous decision was minimal but Forest and manager Vitor Pereira are unlikely to be pacified by Webb's intervention after the fact.

Salisbury's choice to stick with his on-pitch decision despite being sent to the monitor wasn't unique but it was unusual.

That it occurred at Old Trafford over an incident that many observers argued would not have had the same outcome at the other end was a deeply unfortunate twist that fuelled the furore that followed.

Why wasn't Mbeumo handball decision overturned?

As much as some of football's lawmakers, officials and pundits want refereeing decisions in the Premier League's VAR era to be black-and-white matters of the letter of the law, the truth of this incident is that it was a handball because it looked, felt and smelled like a handball to anyone with any understanding of the sport.

Handball is covered by Law 12 in the Laws of the Game, which rules in part that: "It is an offence if a player... touches the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger" and if a player "scores... immediately after the ball has touched their hand/arm even if accidental."

While Salisbury can point to the fact that Mbeumo's arm wasn't in an unnatural position, that he wasn't the goalscorer, and that he didn't fulfil the other 'deliberate' criteria within the handball law, the advantage gained by United was clearly beyond dispute and immediately before the goal was scored.

Mbeumo controlling the ball with his arm wasn't deliberate but it was a definitive factor in the scoring of the goal.

Webb's verdict has confirmed that Salisbury, on second viewing, should have disallowed it.