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Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has taken a swipe at on-field referee David Coote for lacking the personality to not give West Ham a dubious penalty.
United suffered a 2-1 defeat on Sunday at the London Stadium. Crysencio Summerville gave West Ham the lead but it didn’t last long as Casemiro grabbed the equaliser ten minutes later.
In the final stages of the match, the Hammers were awarded a controversial penalty, following the intervention of Michael Oliver and VAR after a coming together between Danny Ings and Matthijs de Ligt.
Coote had initially deemed that there was no infringement but upon being asked to further review the incident by Oliver, he reversed his original decision and gave West Ham the chance to go ahead once again. Jarrod Bowen converted from the spot-kick to deny United a share of the spoils.
In his interview with BBC, Ten Hag branded the incident an “injustice.”
United coach Darren Fletcher also reacted angrily to Coote’s verdict, suggesting that the threshold for what is a penalty changes every week.
Ten Hag spoke to reporters in his post-match presser and once again delved into the issue.
The Dutchman remarked, “First of all, in football not always the best team win and today it was clear and obvious and clear and obvious was not how the VAR worked, how they run their process.”
“Before the season they explained the process of the VAR and only when it is clear and obvious then they should interfere. What they didn’t do against Spurs, where they should have done it, to interfere with the red card of Bruno, that was a wrong decision and now they make a wrong decision interfering. Both had big impacts on the scores of the games.”
“As I say, I don’t criticise any person but I criticise the process. The off-field VAR was Michael Oliver but the on-field, you have to make a decision in the final moment and he did I think three minutes to decide. But then you have to show big personality to recall this decision.”
“I am not criticising any person, I criticise the process and of course there are people running the process. But it had a big impact on the score and the other impact is we didn’t score.”
Ten Hag lamented United’s wastefulness and lack of ruthlessness in front of goal.
“We create so many chances, we played such good football, especially in the first half is exactly how I want to see my team playing. We are so dominant in and out of possession, very good build-up, very good structures, playing between the lines, go around, back inside, go behind, create chances.”
“I collected six or seven 100 per cent chances we should have scored and that is the other thing.”
“When you don’t score, we have to keep calm and keep going, do the same thing and that will create chances. That is a point of improvement but all over I had not so many criticisms of my team apart from not scoring.”
He insisted that he feels sympathy for his players who fought so hard but were ultimately frustrated.
Ten Hag explained that the Red Devils will now look ahead to their upcoming Carabao Cup clash against Leicester City on Wednesday.
Featured image Justin Setterfield via Getty Images