Erik ten Hag refused to hammer Diogo Dalot following his horror miss in Sunday’s defeat to West Ham, insisting that a host of Manchester United players messed up in front of goal.
The Red Devils fell to a disappointing 2-1 defeat at The London Stadium courtesy of a controversial late penalty awarded by VAR. But they had chances to put the game to bed long before Jarrod Bowen beat Andre Onana from the spot in stoppage-time.
It was Dalot’s shocker which drew attention during the match on social media after the Portugal defender somehow blazed over an open goal. However, there were others who just as guilty of spurning golden chances, as Ten Hag pointed out post-match.
Ten Hag said: “We created so many chances and played so much good football, especially in the first half.
“Six or seven 100 per cent chances we should have scored. But when we don’t score we have to stay calm. All over I don’t have so many criticisms about my team, other than not scoring.
“It’s not fair to pick one player (Dalot) out. I can also say Garnacho, twice, Hojlund one time, Rashford, Bruno. So many were missing chances.”
Alejandro Garnacho crashed an effort against the crossbar, while Bruno Fernandes, Rasmus Hojlund and Marcus Rashford all failed to beat Lukas Fabianski in the home goal. Casemiro did find the net to cancel out Crysencio Summerville’s opener, but United were stung late on after VAR intervened to gift West Ham a penalty late in the day.
Ten Hag couldn’t hide his frustration post-match, where he took aim at the VAR process. He then went on to insist that the controversial call that was made at The London Stadium marked the third time this season that his side have already been burned by VAR.
He said: “Three times this season we feel injustice. Before the season there was the instruction about VAR only interfering in clear and obvious mistakes. That is definitely not a clear and obvious mistake from the on field referee.
“More frustrations but I can do nothing with that. They don’t collect points and that’s what we have to do. We have to look in the mirror, we don’t score in a good game from our side.”
Sky Sports deal
