'Nonsense' - Gary Neville hits back at referee's claims over Liverpool's late winner over Nottingham Forest

Gary Neville has argued against Mike Dean's claims that Liverpool's goal was the result of a 'monumental error' after their win over Nottingham Forest.

Liverpool earned a late and crucial victory over Forest in the Premier League over the weekend as Darwin Nunez's header in the ninth minute of stoppage time ensured Jurgen Klopp's side remained at the top of the table. The incident was one of the main talking points from the weekend, as referee Paul Tierney incorrectly applied the rules of the game with a drop-ball situation, as Liverpool found a winner a minute and a half later.

It resulted in great anger from the home crowd at the City Ground as well as from rival fans and, most shockingly, the Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis who stormed down from the stands to contest the decision and had to be held back from confronting Tierney further.

Speaking on his podcast for Sky Sports with Peter Drury, Neville reacted to the claims from Dean who had called it a 'monumental decision' on Sky Sports. However, the former Manchester United defender believes there was a lot of 'nonsense' that has occurred since for a decision that happen nearly two minutes after said incident. "I saw Mike's (Dean) interview before the game today where he described it as a 'monumental error'. I watched it and there's no doubt that the Nottingham Forest player is just in possession and they should've got the ball back. "But the goal came a minute-fifty (seconds) after, I mean two minutes in football is an absolute age. The idea that it's a monumental error because it was a decision based on getting the law wrong, I get it's a mistake but I get the feeling now where we're making, what I think would be, a run-of-the-mill error - something you see in a regular season - being described as a massive thing.

"The owner on the side of the pitch and (Mark) Clattenberg nonsense, I can't have that, I can't buy into it at all. I feel we are pushing the boundaries and inciting, not only, more hate to referees but it could become quite dangerous. We have seen referees attacked in the last two years. You can't complain about a refereeing decision that was one minute 50 before (the goal), one-minute-fifty (seconds), if it was five or 10 seconds after you'd be fuming. To me it's an error, no doubt, Forest should've got the ball and the pattern of play would change but we don't know Liverpool wouldn't have gone up the other end and scored."