VAR Secures The Obligatory United Win, But No Shame In Villa’s Performance – Match Stats

Mike Field

3 years ago

Categories: Match Stats, The Villa Match Zone

A New Year and hopes for a slow return to normality were interrupted this evening as Aston Villa made the trip up to Old Trafford to face off against Manchester United.

It was an incredibly bright start by the hosts and we had a few squeaky bum moments inside of the opening 20 minutes, but having weathered the storm we grew into the game nicely and began cutting out our errors and some fantastic crosses were going in as we upped our own chance count.

It was a very even game for the rest of the 45, but after some utter nonsense on a freekick around their box, United broke and Tyrone Mings got incredibly unlucky when attempting to cut out the cross and they had their lead.

This was far from over though as I’d say the goal came against the run of play, albeit we needed to start actually testing their goalkeeper.

Second half we got better at doing just that and we were arguably running the game as we got to the hour mark. With Dea Gea pulling off a few good saves, Bertrand Traore decided to join us after a woeful first 45 and he had his reward in the 58th minute as he knocked home from close range after great work from Jack.

Obviously that meant only one thing, time for Manchester United to get their contractual penalty award from VAR when it was never a penalty in the history of the game. Again, absolutely disgraceful and many fans will note how quickly United get penalties instead of VAR having to take their usual 10 minutes to invent a semi-plausible reason for awarding it.

Kind of tells it’s own story for those of a cynical nature.

Our heads didn’t drop, but you can tell the penalty affected us so it became a more open game and Emi Martinez again showed his worth with a number of cracking saves. We still had chances ourselves as well.

A point would’ve been fair, but such is life, such are Officials/VAR and we were at Old Trafford.

No shame in our performance, it both shows how far we have come in such a short space of time but also how much of the journey is still ahead of us.

The players will be gutted, but they should be proud and just dust themselves off for the next one.