These delayed OS flags are going to get someone hurt.

This freeze frame… oh no pic.twitter.com/mcCCXzsarw

— UtdPlug (@UtdPlug) October 27, 2024

If you're interested in this sort of thing...xG is

United 1.48 - West Ham .04

That's not a shin guard contact. That's the point of the knee to Onana's temple.

I don't think there was any intent but seems awfully weird that a goalie can get kneed in the head and we're all just OK with it.

David Coote has gotten in the way like 4 times so far.

Garnacho should buy DeLigt a beer for taking a yellow and bailing him out.

It seems like we are perpetually one winger, one midfielder, and one defender away from being good.

(This game is giving me a malaise. Or maybe just making the existing one worse.)

Oh you mean United dominated the first half but didn't score and are now playing like crap in the 2nd half? That's surprising.

Thank you for taking off the one guy who is eating us up this half.

Kill me now

Sigh. Just another bad give away playing out of the back and a ton of missed opportunities.

Unsurprising. Dalot has been terrible today

Rashford was not doing much of anything special this game, but I'm not sure Garnacho shouldn't have been subbed instead. I know it's easy to say that now, but I was thinking it at the time.

Header by Methuselah.

Zirkzee and Casemiro pulling our asses out of the fire somewhat

You've got to be kidding me…

Oh FFS. There is nothing there. Just a bunch of guys in a scrum.

That's nothing. I mean nothing.

In what ****ing world is that ever a pen?

That's 4 players all going at the ball and Ings is the last guy there. That's not a foul.

12". They just made that up.

I'm so mad right now…. F all these refs.

This is absurd. I mean completely fitting for this United but 1) Ings handled and 2) that is the poster child for everything wrong with VAR when it slows down and re-ajudicates decisions.

Whatever.

If I'm EtH I'm getting tossed there. That's just made up refereeing. Make them send you off.

Ref even looked like he wasn't convinced when he called it after reviewing

So. They announce 12". And in 3" of added time so far the ball had been in play for 0".

I mean that is literally the usage of VAR that the EPL said they wanted to stop. It's just laughable.

Michael Oliver is the VAR official. I don't know why he's supposedly such a great official. He constantly makes decisions that make me want to punch his stupid Geordie face.

https://www.whufc.com/news/match-officials-confirmed-manchester-united-clash

Well this really clears it right up. Thanks PGMOL!

🚨 Premier League statement on West Ham penalty.

“The referee did not award a penalty to West Ham for a challenge by de Ligt on Ings”.

“The VAR deemed there was sufficient contact on Ings’ lower leg and recommended an on-field review. The referee overturned his original… pic.twitter.com/tQQAo2oktz

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) October 27, 2024

Got that statement out faster than the review

Here's the thing with that or any other statement VAR gives...

"The VAR deemed there was sufficient contact on Ings' lower leg and recommended an on-field review. The referee overturned his original decision and awarded a penalty."

...is a bunch of bull*****

They word it as if it was just the on-field referee seeing the light after the replay and realizing he missed something. But that's not what happens. That's never what happens.

Instead what happened...what always happens...is some guy in a booth miles away looking at a TV replay, deciding that the referee made a mistake and then, indirectly, telling the referee that they need to change their call by saying "you need to review this".

No referee in the world has ever looked at a VAR replay like that and walked away saying "OK, I'm good with the call I made...play on." Why? Because a senior colleague is effectively telling you that you didn't. They wouldn't send it down to your review if they thought you got it right.

It's the same bull**** as last year and the year before with VAR. It's what they said they would stop doing now and only do it in egregious situations. But the league hasn't. They can't manage it. They have no idea how to use VAR properly and never will.

There were at least 3 things to blame for that loss and at most 1 of them can be blamed mostly on ETH. The performance for at least the first half of the 2nd half was as frustrating as it was predictable. Can't really blame anyone other than him and the coaching staff for routinely allowing his team to play multiple games within a game. It was a thing even in his first season...an inability to play frequently play two good halves of football in the same game. I mean we all knew that 2nd half was coming for a reason and we were all correct.

But damn did Garnacho, Rashford and others really let him down with that first half finishing. Really no excuse for not having a multiple goal lead going into halftime and then maybe, just maybe, the inevitable 2nd half collapse and refereeing BS becomes less of a thing due to the cushion.

Thank the lord A&M beat the swamp turds and I'm busy packing up our house today. Otherwise I might have watched this game.

According to today's Athletic article, United have the worst variance between xG/game and actual goals/game and it's not even close. What I thought was also interesting is that United's xG/game compares pretty well to the teams you would want them to be competing against.

United - 1.6
Arsenal - 1.6
Liverpool - 1.7
Chelsea - 1.8

Unsurprisingly, City lead the league at 2.0 but pretty surprisingly (to me anyway) they share that lead with Tottenham.