(Credit: Imago)

West Brom cheated v Derby County as Keith Hackett speaks out on amazing incident

Refereeing Consultant AUTHORITY Former FIFA Referee; Head of PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited). FOCUS Laws of the Game, VAR implementation, officiating performance, and PGMOL policy. THE AUDIT Keith utilises Statscore’s Officiating Telemetry, including Deep-Data Metrics like Incident Accuracy Rates, VAR Intervention Latency, and Official Positional Efficiency. He provides technical refereeing analysis to reveal the regulatory reality behind match-defining decisions.

Published on:

21 Apr 2025, 12:30 pm

West Brom fans were outraged in the first half of their clash with Derby County, as they fell victim to a shocking refereeing decision.

The Baggies fell off in the race for promotion, and are out of the battle for a Championship play-off spot.

Tony Mowbray's side are in terrible form, but they had the chance to arrest the rot as they faced relegation battlers Derby at The Hawthorns.

West Brom found themselves 2-0 down at half time, in a game they went on to lose 3-1, but they will be particularly livid as the game could have swung the other way.

West Brom crashed out of the race for the play-offs (Credit: Imago)

West Brom denied penalty v Derby County

West Brom were pushing forward with the score at 0-0, and winger Tom Fellows cut inside into the box, before he was brought down from behind by Matthew Clarke.

Remarkably, the referee did not award a penalty, and to make matters worse for the Baggies, they went on to concede just minutes later.

Speaking exclusively to West Brom News, former Premier League referee Keith Hackett claimed that a penalty should have been awarded.

"That is a clear foul and amazing that the referee failed to award a penalty kick. The referee was sleeping on the job. Poor decision," Hackett stated.

Tom Fellows was denied a penalty v Derby (Credit: Imago)

West Brom run out of ideas v Derby

West Brom's form has taken a nosedive in recent weeks, and their clash with Derby was the final chance of retaining any hope of securing a place in the play-offs.

Derby headed into the game with a lot more motivation as they aimed to avoid relegation, and it showed as they were the more determined side.

Mowbray's side could have taken the lead had the penalty been given, but even beyond that, they just were not good enough - again.

West Brom are now out of ideas going forward, and have ended the season in a whimper to leave many questions heading into the summer.

Keith Hackett

Tom Fellows

Championship