Jarrod Bowen rubs salt in Erik ten Hag’s wounds with admission over Man Utd penalty

Jarrod Bowen has suggested that the controversial late penalty that sunk Manchester United shouldn’t have been given.

The West Ham attacker coolly converted from the spot to condemn the Red Devils to another chastening defeat, with the Hammers leapfrogging their Premier League rivals in the table.

VAR official Michael Oliver advised David Coote to go to the monitor following a coming together between Matthijs de Ligt and Danny Ings. The call was soft, though, and slammed by Erik ten Hag post-match.

And even Bowen felt that there was nothing in the incident, though he had no problems with compounding United’s misery by dispatching said penalty in stoppage-time.

He told Premier League Productions: “At the time I saw [Danny] Ings got kicked and I think they got kicked so I thought it wasn’t a pen. I had a feeling it might get given and then Cre [Somerville] had the ball and it was a waiting game.

“With penalties you have a routine you know where you’re going. But when you’re waiting you’re thinking shall I go the other way? But I stuck with what I know and stepped up and wanted to dispatch and thankfully I did that.”

While Bowen admitted that he felt the penalty call was harsh, Ten Hag was far more brutal in his own press conference. The Dutchman insisted that his team had now been screwed over three times by VAR this season, branding it an “injustice”.

He said: “Three times this season we feel injustice. Before the season there was the instruction about VAR only interfering in clear and obvious mistakes. That is definitely not a clear and obvious mistake from the on field referee.

“More frustrations but I can do nothing with that. They don’t collect points and that’s what we have to do. We have to look in the mirror, we don’t score in a good game from our side.”

When he was asked if he’d spoken with the officials, Ten Hag added: “I spoke with them. But the decision is made. There’s no way back and that’s football.

“That’s a third time I have felt injustice in the season and it has a big impact on our team and on our scores and where we are in the table. It’s not right.”