{"id":641682,"date":"2026-05-01T00:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T00:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/641682\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T00:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T00:53:08","slug":"unai-emery-villa-boss-furious-with-var-for-not-sending-off-elliot-anderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/641682\/","title":{"rendered":"Unai Emery: Villa boss furious with VAR for not sending off Elliot Anderson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aston Villa manager Unai Emery was highly critical of the video assistant referee for not sending off Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson in two impassioned rants after his side’s 1-0 loss in the first leg<\/a> of their Europa League semi-final.<\/p>\n

Anderson avoided punishment for a first-half sliding tackle in which he won the ball but then caught the ankle of Ollie Watkins with a high, studs-up challenge.<\/p>\n

Referee Joao Pinheiro did not take action – and there was only what appeared to be a very brief VAR review before the incident was cleared.<\/p>\n

Forest would go on to win through a VAR-awarded penalty which Chris Wood scored – but Emery accepted that decision.<\/p>\n

“Fantastic, the referee, fantastic,” Emery told TNT Sports. “But the VAR is so, so bad. It’s a clear red card – I don’t understand why the VAR is not calling the referee because it’s so clear. <\/p>\n

“And it’s very, very important. It’s a huge, huge mistake. VAR is responsible.<\/p>\n

“The referee – fantastic, fantastic job, 10 out of 10. I appreciated how he managed the match for 90 minutes.<\/p>\n

“But I watched it back – wow. Huge. He could break his ankle. Wow, VAR – where are you? Please. It is your responsibility, we are professionals. You are doing very bad work because it was so clear for everybody [to see]. He could break his ankle.<\/p>\n

“I respect the referees always but VAR, I don’t understand. It’s not fair.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Villa manager Unai Emery was highly critical of the video assistant referee for not sending off Nottingham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-641682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}