Huddersfield Town's painful lesson, tearful goodbyes and VAR failures in five conclusions

Huddersfield Town suffered bitter disappointment at Wembley as they missed out on promotion back to the Premier League thanks to a 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest in the Championship play-off final.

The game featured few moments of quality or clear cut chances from either side and was settled by a Levi Colwill own goal shortly before half time as he attempted to stop Ryan Yates from finishing James Garner’s cross into the box.

Carlos Corberan changed things up in the second half to encourage his side to push forward in search of an equaliser, but despite an improvement in their work on the ball they were unable to break the Forest back line down and create the golden opportunity they needed to get back into the game – with two very strong penalty shouts turned down by referee Jonathan Moss and going ungiven by VAR. Here are our five conclusions on the game.

There’s only one place to start if only so it’s not hanging over the rest of this article like the sword of Damocles. There was universal agreement in the press box and everywhere else we have looked that Huddersfield Town should have been given at least one, if not two penalties as they chased the game late on in search of an equaliser.

Long-term readers will know we are reluctant to hone in even on the refereeing decisions we profoundly disagree with, because to us there are usually 89 other minutes in which to win the game and feel undue prominence is given to those incidents. But there are three things that make the penalty shouts Harry Toffolo and especially Lewis O’Brien had especially egregious on this occasion.

For one…they were absolute stonewallers. Second, the game was so tight and chances were so few and far between that on this particular occasion, giving