West Ham 2-1 Man United: Red Devils fall to controversial defeat

Clocks may change but Manchester United remain the same. If there is anything to be said for this shambling wreck of a team under Erik ten Hag, it is in their ability to find imaginative new ways of turning up a day late and a dollar short.

Of course, there will be mitigations. There will be howls of injustice. Because with Ten Hag there is always an excuse and here, at the home of one of the Premier League's least impressive sides, they could lay hands on a decent one for a change.

The penalty with which they were beaten was a sham and a distillation of football in the VAR era, where mountains of problems can be found in the vagaries of a freeze-frame.

In this case that meant a foul being detected against Matthijs de Ligt for contact with Danny Ings that was simply unavoidable. 

The area was crowded and the misdemeanour so slight, you cannot help but wonder how on earth the VAR concluded a clear and obvious error had been committed by the on-field officials. Baffling. Infuriating. Unnecessary.

But let's not be too generous in apportioning this United loss to the mistakes of others. Let's swerve the temptation to put it all down to the events leading up to Jarrod Bowen nailing a 90th-minute penalty.

No, this was every bit as much about United's shortcomings. This was about a team that had sufficient chances to win three or four games but instead left London with a fourth league defeat of the season.

This one was built on their own incompetencies in the box, encapsulated by an open-goal missed by Diogo Dalot and a parallel first-half narrative that wrapped itself 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, if this is the straw that breaks his back at a point when his superiors are conducting auditions elsewhere, then the wastefulness of his side is every bit as responsible as those meddlers at Stockley Park.

Ultimately it was Ten Hag's players who left this game in the balance long enough for a robbery to be made possible. It was their failure to kill it off long before Crysencio Summerville put West Ham ahead and it was their failure to capitalise once Casemiro had got them level again.

If we are to give Ten Hag any credit, it is that they controlled much of the fixture. He made three changes to the XI which drew Fenerbahce, meaning this was a 10-piece replica of the side that looked so competent, impressive almost, in the second half of the Brentford win.

In the nuts and bolts, that meant Rasmus Hojlund replaced Joshua Zirkzee at the tip of the 4-2-3-1 and Ten Hag predicted that would increase the potency. It did not.

As for Julen Lopetegui, he made four changes to the side crushed by Tottenham. 

The loss of Mohammed Kudus was forced by the suspension of his own making, while Lukasz Fabianski replaced Alphonse Areola in goal. 

Carlos Soler, Konstantinos Mavropanos and Edson Alvarez all came in, but if the hope was for some urgency, purpose or pride, then the opening half would be considered a spectacular failure.

Inside two minutes Guido Rodriguez gave the ball away, spawning a United attack that culminated with Alejandro Garnacho hitting the bar, and a moment later Maximilian Kilman went unpunished for a sloppy pass of his own. 

Those errors set a tone, as did the misadventures of Aaron Wan-Bissaka, whose surges from right back were awfully fun to watch but, as so often, left a glaring space to be attacked behind him. 

That is very much the West Ham way currently - whether the signings were Lopetegui's idea, such as Rodriguez, or parachuted on to him by sporting director Tim Steidten, much of what we see from them is dysfunctional. David Moyes's work ages better by the minute.

Here, West Ham's only notable achievement was to conjure the illusion of a fast-moving, penetrative Manchester United. It was reflected in the shot count.

Garnacho, having hit the frame, was quickly allowed another excellent chance that he rolled wide after Alvarez was caught out of position, and Fernandes missed a free header from 10 yards when Konstantinos Mavropanos botched his efforts to trap him offside.

The biggest opportunity of the bunch fell to Dalot and it followed the established blueprint of a West Ham calamity being accompanied by poor United finishing. 

In one regard that meant the lack of pressure on Fernandes as he dropped a lovely ball over the high line to Dalot, who was unmarked, naturally, and in the other it was showcased when the Portuguese defender then missed an open goal. His touch past Fabianski had taken care of the hard part, but he misjudged the bounce and made a mess of the finish.

Around that point a statistic circulated – of 26 big chances created this season, United have missed 22 of them. Add to the list a Casemiro header from a Christian Eriksen delivery, though that was more a case of a fine save by Fabianski. For good measure, Alvarez also headed against his own bar.

Garnacho volleyed into the side netting at the start of the second period, but by then West Ham were creating pockets of pressure of their own. That was demonstrated when Emerson fluffed his connection from five yards after a ball in front of goal by Antonio – a miss United would be proud of – and was underlined when Summerville commenced the heist.

None of it was pretty, which is to say it was rooted in a scuffed finish from Ings after a low cross from Jarrod Bowen, but West Ham's good fortune is the loose ball found Summerville at the far post. Having been deprived of playing time this season by Lopetegui, he deserved the luck, and on a related point, they played far better with him on the pitch.

But still United were able to work their way back, with Casemiro, who had been strong all game, poaching the equaliser with his head after Amad's high ball into the air was worked into the middle by Dalot and Zirkzee. A 1-1 draw was the least they deserved.

But this is United. When it rains, it comes down in buckets, fair or unfair. The penalty felt unfair and so did the result. And yet Ten Hag's players allowed such jeopardy to exist and that has happened far too often for it to be washed away as an accident.