Manchester United’s season continues to go from bad to worse after a flurry of missed chances, combined with some contentious referee calls saw them fall 2-1 at West Ham United.
Manchester United created enough to have gone out of sight in the first half itself but left themselves open to a sucker punch by wasting all.
That sucker punch did arrive in the second half and even though United did equalise shortly after, the referee was determined to have the last laugh.
VAR intervened needlessly and gave West Ham a penalty which Jarrod Bowen dispatched to give the Hammers a lead which they would hold on to leave United in 14th place in the table.
Erik ten Hag gave his verdict on the penalty incident but MUTV pundit Ben Thornley, while expressing sympathy for a clearly wrong call, made a clear point about the game as a whole.
MUTV pundit on penalty incident vs West Ham
There won’t be many who would defend VAR’s decision to call the on-field referee to reverse that penalty call and that’s a sign of how wrong a decision that was.
Even the fiercest critics were flabbergasted at that decision and VAR’s clarification over the penalty incident was questionable at best, tone deaf at worst.
However, that only came in the second half when the score was tied at 1-1. There is a legitimate argument to be made that the incident should have been a footnote to the game instead of the headline.
United should have been out of sight by then and that continued a theme where they have missed chances by the bucketloads throughout the season.
MUTV pundit Ben Thornley made the same point after the match, saying that while the decision definitely went against them, the point at which it was made should have rendered it ‘immaterial’.
He said: “The referee decision will be spoken about but the point at which it happened should have been immaterial. The players in the dressing room would know.
“You just cannot, you don’t get that many chances in the Premier League and you can’t afford to miss that many and that’s where the frustration lies.”
Penalty incident only confirmed the inevitable
Many fans could have seen this coming when United missed chance after chance in the first half that it would ultimately come back to bite them.
That’s what happened and even if it occurred in a ridiculously unlucky scenario out of their hands, the reality remains that United’s own problems made it a bigger incident than it needed to be.
This season, United have created 26 big chances and have managed to miss 22 of those, a startling conversation rate of just 15%.
Ten Hag recently said they missed Rasmus Hojlund for his clinical finishing but it was actually his teammates who the majority of the first-half chances fell.
United created enough to win but dropped points and the fact that this statement can be used to sum up at least four games this season, which would alter the perception around the team and the manager speaks volumes.
The players are the ones missing chance after chance but the manager will pay for it ultimately with his job. That’s not to say he’s faultless, far from it.
However, he will have a genuine point when he says this team’s season would look much different had they taken even half of their chances.
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