It was certainly an eventful day at the Emirates with a really exciting match with end-to-end football. But the busiest man on the pitch today was the referee, who spent longer talking to the VAR ref and looking at the replays than he did refereeing the game!
Nuno Tavares’ goal that gave us a very early lead was uncontentious, but our second was very weird as Nketiah’s goal was correctly ruled out by VAR for offide, but then strangely we were awarded a penalty for the foul on Saka just before we scored! Saka very bravely took the penalty again and made no mistake.
Then very quickly Cristiano Ronaldo got one back and United were back in the game. Fernandes crazily missed a penalty that would have made the game level again. Cue the Arsenal cheers!.
In the second half Ronaldo scored yet again, but was ruled off for being inches offside. And to cap it off, the United boss believes that Arsenal’s third goal was also offside. Rangnick told BTSport (transcribed by the Guardian) said afterwards: “We showed an improved performance, but in the end, it’s a disappointing result. We bounced back well from the early goal and had numerous chances to score more goals. The only weak side of our performance was that we didn’t defend well inside and around box.
“For me there were also three unlucky VAR decisions. The third goal of Arsenal was clearly offside, David [de Gea] said to me he couldn’t see the ball. The second goal of Cristiano was definitely not offside. There was another handball decision in the first half. We were not happy with those VAR decisions, but it was an improved performance. It would have helped us a lot if [the missed penalty] was the equaliser and would have changed the whole game. But we didn’t, we hit the post, we hit the post twice, plus the crossbar. So in the end, very unlucky for us. There is nothing about the attitude of the players that we should fault today.”
This VAR rubbish seems to be getting worse in every game and to be honest I am heartily sick of it. Remember when you sawa goal go in and you could celebrate straight away.
In my opinion it is making a mockery of the game!