West Ham 2-1 Man United: Blunt Red Devils fall to controversial defeat after Jarrod Bowen scores stoppage-time penalty following more VAR drama to pile pressure on Erik ten Hag

Clocks may change, but Manchester United remains the same. If there’s anything to be said for this shaky wreck of a team under Erik ten Hag, it’s their ability to find imaginative new ways to get a day late and a dollar short.

Of course there will be mitigations. There will be howls of injustice. Because at Ten Hag there is always an excuse and here, in the home of one of the Premier League’s least impressive teams, they could at least get their hands on a decent excuse.

The penalty that saw them defeated by West Ham was a farce and a distillation of football in the VAR era, where the vagaries of a freeze-frame can override any sense of reason.

In this case, this meant a foul against Matthijs de Ligt due to unavoidable contact with Danny Ings.

The area was crowded and the offense was so minor – if it existed at all – that one wonders how the VAR, Michael Oliver, came to the conclusion that referee David Coote had made a clear and obvious error. The fact that it took Oliver two minutes to discover it says it all.

But let’s not be too generous in attributing this United loss to the mistakes of others. Let’s resist the temptation to attribute everything to the events leading up to Jarrod Bowen’s 90th-minute penalty.

No, this was just as much about United’s shortcomings. This was a side that had plenty of good chances to win five games, but instead left London with a fourth league defeat of the season.

This was built on their own incompetence in the penalty area, encapsulated by an open goal missed by Diogo Dalot and a parallel story from the first half that wrapped around a question: how could West Ham spend so much money in the summer and still look so cheap?

If this is the end for Ten Hag, at a time when his superiors are once again holding beauty parades elsewhere, then the waste on his part was as responsible as those meddling people in Stockley Park.

Ultimately, it was Ten Hag’s players who left this match hanging in the balance long enough to pull off a robbery. It was their inability to knock the team out long before Crysencio Summerville put West Ham ahead, and it was their inability to rebuild the team after Casemiro had brought the team back on level terms.

If we have to give Ten Hag credit, it is that he also admitted that. Secondly, it is not one of those disjointed performances that have defined large parts of his tenure.

He made three changes to the XI, drawing Fenerbahce, meaning this was largely the same side that looked suitably impressive in the second half of the Brentford win. A large part of this has been successful. Manuel Ugarte was unlucky to lose his place to Casemiro because he had done well in Turkey, but Casemiro was strong for more reasons than his goal. Together with Bruno Fernandes, he was perhaps United’s best player.

But it was a blunt attempt: with the start of Rasmus Hojlund, Ten Hag predicted that the potential would increase, but that did not happen, despite West Ham’s apparent desire to help them.

Julen Lopetegui spent most of his afternoon in a state of exasperation. He made four changes to the side crushed by Tottenham, but if hopes were based on any sense of urgency or pride, the first half was a spectacular failure.

Within two minutes, Guido Rodriguez gave the ball away, culminating in Alejandro Garnacho hitting the crossbar, and moments later Maximilian Kilman went unpunished for a sloppy pass of his own.

Those mistakes set the tone, as did the misfortunes of Aaron Wan-Bissaka, whose attacks from right-back are always fun to watch but repeatedly left room to be attacked behind him.

That’s West Ham’s way at the moment. Whether the signings were Lopetegui’s idea, like the struggling Guido Rodriguez, or parachuted in by sporting director Tim Steidten, much of what we see from them is dysfunctional. It was reflected in how much United were allowed to create.

Garnacho, who had hit the frame, soon had another excellent chance that curled wide after Edson Alvarez was caught out of position, and Fernandes missed a free header from ten yards as Konstantinos Mavropanos failed in his attempts to put him offside.

The pack’s biggest chance was for Dalot, who was released by a beautiful ball from Fernandes over the top. Unknowingly, the Portuguese defender took care of the difficult part by pushing past Lukasz Fabianski, but he misjudged the bounce and roared the finish.

Around that point, a statistic was circulating: of the 26 big chances created this season, United have missed 22. Add to the list a Casemiro header from a Christian Eriksen throw, although that was more of a fine save from Fabianski. For good measure, Alvarez also headed against his own crossbar.

Garnacho struck into the side netting at the start of the second period, but by then West Ham were creating pressure of their own. This was demonstrated when Emerson fluffed his connection from five yards after a ball in front of Antonio’s goal and was underlined when Summerville started the attack.

None of that was pretty, which is to say it was rooted in a scuffed 74th-minute finish from Ings after a low cross from Bowen, but West Ham’s luck came when the loose ball found Summerville at the far post.

Since he wasn’t given playing time by Lopetegui this season, he deserved the luck, and on a related point they played much better with him on the pitch. To give the manager his due, that substitution and the introduction of Ings both had an impact.

Yet United were able to work their way back, with Casemiro nodding home an equalizer in the 81st minute.

A 1-1 draw was the least they deserved. But this is United and when it rains, it pours down. The punishment felt unfair. And yet Ten Hag’s players allowed such a danger to exist, and that happens far too often to call it an accident.