Gary Neville has compared Mark Clattenburg to a "navy seal" and has urged Nottingham Forest to get him out of the director's box on match days.

Forest are reportedly considering legal action against Sky after pundit Neville said the club were acting like a "mafia gang" after their controversial statement following their weekend defeat to Luton. Nuno Espirito Santo's team felt they were denied three penalties in the 2-0 defeat at Goodison, and released an explosive statement after full-time, claiming VAR Stuart Attwell was a fan of relegation rivals Luton and that they had asked Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) to have him replaced.

The City Ground club have been hammered throughout the game for their approach, with Neville being one of the critics in chief. He has called on Clattenburg to resign after the former Premier League whistler penned a Daily Mail column doubling down on Forest's stance, which Neville also blasted.

Neville won't be at Forest's game against Man City this weekend, instead covering the North London derby for Sky Sports. But he reckons Clattenburg's presence is only adding to Forest's problems, highlighting the footage of him making a beeline for the club's chief executive and whispering in his ear at Goodison as just one of the distractions for Forest's squad.

"You’ve got Clattenburg almost like a Navy Seal in the director’s box crawling along to the CEO [whispering],” Neville told the Stick to Football podcast. “The reason I asked him to resign was because if he actually saw that Luton tweet that went out, he actually has to distance himself from it or he’s part of it. If he’s part of that, I’m like ‘wow’.

“The second part of it is it’s football, right. If you’re the leader of that football club, since Mark Clattenburg came in, in the last 10 games they’ve won one match. In the 10 games before, they won four. You never give football players or employees a get-out excuse ever. He’s given them an excuse to not win. Now that might sound crazy, but when you put that negativity in, Neco Williams, he’s probably a really good player, he’s coming out on Sunday and he’s talking about referees.

“They’re all consumed about referees, and they’ve given themselves an excuse, everyone’s against us. It’s not working for them this strategy of the way in which it’s going.

“What they need to do is switch their mentality completely and forget about referees. Get Clattenburg out the director’s box so the camera stops going on him and concentrate on football, because they’re going to go down if they’re not careful.”