VAR controversy gives Ten Hag another way to blame anything other than himself

LONDON — It’s becoming increasingly difficult to come to the same conclusions about Manchester United as Erik ten Hag. Asked on Thursday about the 3-0 drubbing they received at home to Tottenham Hotspur, Ten Hag said he chooses to “deny” and “ignore” the defeat because the red card shown to Bruno Fernandes was subsequently rescinded.

If Ten Hag felt that loss should be scrubbed out because of a refereeing error, he’s likely to adopt the same defence after this result at the London Stadium. But by the time Matthijs de Ligt made contact with Danny Ings‘ leg inside the box in the 87th minute, a match that Man United had initially dominated had already turned against them.

Ten Hag has grounds for complaint about a decision that decisively swung proceedings after the VAR, Michael Oliver, advised a controversial spot kick to the home side. It led to West Ham United‘s stoppage-time winner, Jarrod Bowen stepping up to make the final score 2-1, but his team’s familiar failings were there for all to see.

The simple fact is that by then Man United had already come undone, they had lost their way from a position of control to one where only the opposition looked likely winners — and not for the first time.

Ten Hag must hate his yearly trip to east London. Ten Hag has never earned even a single point from a Premier League match at this stadium; Cristiano Ronaldo and Jesse Lingard were on the scoresheet last time they won here in 2021. Ten Hag even waved his hand to swat away the pre-match bubbles, such was his aversion to this place.

His problems don’t just crop up against West Ham, though. The midweek draw with Fenerbahce in the Europa League stretched Man United’s winless run in Europe to a whole calendar year and, apart from a victory over a bottom-placed Southampton aside, his team have forgotten how to win on the road in the Premier League, too.

Here, as has become the norm, Ten Hag decided against taking full responsibility for the defeat.

“In football it is not always the best team winning, and today there was clear and obvious and clear and obvious wasn’t how the VAR worked,” Ten Hag said. “How they worked, how they run their process. And before the season they explained the process of the VAR and only when it’s clear and obvious then they should interfere.

“So what [the VAR] didn’t do against Spurs where they should have done it to interfere with the red card of Bruno [Fernandes]. There was a wrong decision and now they make again a wrong decision interfering and both have big impact on the scores of the games.”

Ten Hag may have a point, but the facts make for tough reading.

Man United did, though, begin brightly as Fernandes twice set up Alejandro Garnacho for chances that you would expect him to score. Fernandes then fluffed his own lines by ballooning a free header over the crossbar, drawing yet more sighs from the home crowd and a few thousand glares toward head coach Julen Lopetegui, himself under intense pressure after a lacklustre start to the season.

Diogo Dalot‘s inexplicable miss drew a player’s most-feared type of crowd reaction: an embarrassed laugh. The Portugal international touched the ball past the onrushing goalkeeper before impatiently skewing his volley wide of the open goal from six yards out.

For a player touted as the young star in United’s attack, Garnacho’s career output could hardly be described as eye-catching. He has 20 goals and 13 assists in 100 appearances for Man United in all competitions since making his debut in April 2022. His much-maligned teammate, Marcus Rashford, has managed 46 goals and 20 assists in 126 matches in that time.

Fernandes, meanwhile, has had more shots without scoring (25) than any other goalless player in the Premier League this season.

Ten Hag bemoaned Man United’s lack of cutting edge against Fenerbahce and his disgust was plain to see as he stood motionless on the touchline. His team should have put the game to bed in the first half in which they registered 1.48xG and held West Ham to an xG of 0.04.

Lopetegui intervened at half-time and his changes had an impact. And they needed to. A triple substitution included the introduction of Crysencio Summerville, with the winger’s mazy runs at the Man United defence creating gaps that turned the tide in West Ham’s favour and got the fans on side.

Inevitably, it was Summerville who stole in at the back post to put the home side ahead. Casemiro‘s equaliser with nine minutes to go always felt like it was papering over the cracks, which Bowen’s penalty duly exposed.

At full-time West Ham had improved their xG to 2.98, bettering United’s by 0.6, a clear sign of how Lopetegui was the difference-maker, while Ten Hag was unable to have any such influence on his side.

There are now only six sides below Man United in the Premier League table, and only two teams have scored fewer goals than their eight.

“It [the penalty decision] had a big impact on the score and the other impact was that we didn’t score and we create so many chances,” Ten Hag added. “We played so good football, especially the first half, [it is] exactly how I want to see my team playing — so dominant in and out of position, very good build up, very good structures, playing between the lines, go around back inside, go behind, create chances.

“I think I collected six, seven, 100% percent chances we should have scored and that is the other thing. And then of course when you don’t score, we have to keep calm and keep going and do the same things. That will create you chances and that is a point of improvement. But all over I had not so many criticisms of my team apart from not scoring.”

After hosting Chelsea next weekend, Man United then face Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Everton — three of those six teams with a worse record after nine games. Ten Hag cannot afford for his luck not to change in those matches.

Perhaps this is just United’s level now. In the Premier League era, West Ham have been a midtable team — usually good enough to avoid sinking too low, but only capable of producing intermittent flashes of quality. Sometimes it’s enough for an eye-catching victory, sometimes it coughs up 90 minutes of inertia and drift. Remind you of anyone?