Chris Sutton has levelled the blame for Nottingham Forest conceding Brentford's opener on the club's players on Mail Sport's It's All Kicking Off podcast - despite the side's protestations.
Ivan Toney celebrated his first Premier League match following an eight-month ban for breaching illegal gambling regulations from the FA by scoring a cleverly-worked free-kick to draw Brentford level in the first half of their match on Saturday.
The England international appeared to move the referee's foam for marking the distance before curving the ball past the visitors' wall and waiting goalkeeper Matt Turner.
Forest later wrote a letter to the Premier League and the PGMOL asking for 'clarification' on why the controversial first goal was allowed to stand in Brentford's 3-2 win.
But both of the podcast's hosts - Sutton and Mail Sport's Football Editor Ian Ladyman - rubbished the club's decision and instead jokingly called for Forest to write letters to their players calling them 'fools'.
Sutton was the first to argue that the blame should instead 'lie with the Nottingham Forest players'.
His reasoning laid with the fact that 'even an under-12s team would have seen a player moving the ball trying to gain an advantage'.
'These players are paid tens of thousands of pounds a week to switch on and have a responsibility,' Sutton said. 'And I think it was (Ryan) Yates at the end of the wall who had his back turned. I'm not going to blame him.
'I think there was the player outside the wall and then they had another three players, four players in the wall, I think another player at his back turned actually and then they had the draft excluder as well with his back turned, but there were three players who must have seen what was going on and didn't do anything about it.
'Why not just say, "shuffle across, he's moving the ball, we can all see what he's trying to do". Do anything, bring the referee's attention to it,
'But I don't see that the blame lies with Ivan Toney. He got away with something and tried to gain an advantage. Some people would call it cheating. But the Nottingham Forest players have to take great responsibility. The club should write to the players in the wall and tell them that they are fools.'
The pundit stressed that the players had 'switched off' and that it was 'obvious' what he was trying to do - and therefore, preventable.
Ladyman agreed, noting that all 11 of the Forest players in the penalty area in the build-up 'not a single one of them is looking at Ivan Toney'.
But rather than blame a single player, Sutton said that 'they are all to blame' due to the team - and their defending - being 'a collective'.
'It's a total lack of responsibility,' Sutton said, before Ladyman teased a potential letter head coach Nuno Espirito Santo could write to his squad: 'Dear Dean (Henderson) You're a fool. Love Nuno'.
Sutton added that due to the skill and consistency of Toney - who netted 20 Premier League goals last season - the opposition should have been 'switched on for every eventuality'.
'Whether he's trying to gain an advantage, (no matter) how unlikely you think it is, you have to be aware, you have to be switched on just in case he does maneuver the ball a little bit, which he did,' Sutton added.
'And there is the argument about whether he was a cheat and the stuff with the foam or whatever. But we all know which way it works.
'Had a Nottingham Forest player that had done the same thing at the other end, the Nottingham Forest fans would be saying, "that's genius - one of our players doing that."'