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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Sport
Kieran King

Nottingham Forest and Wolves players in mass brawl amid fury over controversial celebration

The Football Association are reviewing the mass brawl between Nottingham Forest and Wolves at the end of their Carabao Cup quarter-final.

After Forest had won a penalty shoot-out to secure their path to the last four, both sets of players were involved in a melee, with stewards forced to run on to the City Ground pitch to intervene.

The highly-competitive affair boiled over following the shootout after Wolves new boy Matheus Cunha replicated Morgan Gibbs-White's celebration during the shootout. The latter decided to point his fingers into his ears and stand directly at the travelling Wolves contingent after scoring his penalty - an incident that followed Willy Boly's respectful and muted celebration earlier on after he opened the scoring against his former club during the 90 minutes.

Cunha decided to do the same celebration as Gibbs-White but directed it at the Forest fans in an attempt to mock the ex-Wolves ace. Colback joined in with the fun following his successful spot-kick, and after Hodge missed for Wolves to send Forest through, the clash hit breaking point.

Henderson wildly celebrated on his own, and with the rest of the Forest players, before the two teams clashed in the middle of the park. There is still no firm evidence as to why it kicked off but it appeared that Toti Gomes and Gibbs-White were involved in an altercation, while security had to come over to tackle the brawl.

Serge Aurier, Adama Traore, Jesse Lingard and Henderson were also in the thick of the action, with both teams' coaching staff aiming to cool the tempers. Julien Lopetegui went over to Aurier to calm the Ivorian down as he didn't look best pleased with Toti as Henderson continued to celebrate and taunt the Wolves players.

The FA will review the referee’s report when it arrives and video footage but a charge would appear highly likely.

Morgan Gibbs-White's celebration caused chaos at The City Ground (Getty Images)
Dean Henderson celebrates after Nottingham Forest's win over Wolves (Getty Images)

After the game, Steve Cooper commented on the incident but didn't give much away. He said: “I haven’t had chance to assess it to be honest and I am not sitting on the fence too much,” he said.

“I just haven’t, it has been a quick turnaround, 12 hours or something, and I have been more focused on the Leicester game.

“To be fair everything was calm in the tunnel after and I know some of the Wolves staff and we spoke about the game, so there was nothing that went on after whatever went on on the pitch so I apologise for not giving you something, but I don’t want to say something because I am not aware of what happened.”

Both teams are sunk deep into a Premier League relegation battle, with Wolves currently in 19th, having collected just 14 points from their 18 matches, while Forest are four places and three points above them in the table. Wolves are next in action when they face fellow strugglers West Ham, with Cooper's Forest facing a mouth-watering tie against East Midlands rivals Leicester.

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