So here we are again, with yet another apparent refereeing controversy involving Manchester United, as I’ve written about before. But the question is, why? After United’s 2-1 win at Luton on Sunday the Luton manager, Rob Edwards, suggested that the four minutes of time added on at the end of the match wasn’t enough and would have been longer “if Manchester United weren’t winning.”
Is he serious or just bitter? Let’s look at some facts.
Firstly, Luton scored to make it 2-1 in the FOURTEENTH minute. That means Luton had a whole seventy six minutes, even without the added time to find an equaliser and Andrey Onana barely had a save to make, in fact, it was United who had the better chances.
Where exactly does Edwards think the extra minutes should have come from? There were no goals, no major injuries of any kind and not many substitutions, four minutes seemed about right to me. Is it play until we score now and don’t forget that United are allowed to score in added time too.
Speaking of which, just a few weeks earlier, with United leading 3-2 at Wolves, nine minutes were added, in which times Wolves scored and then United scored again, resulting in a total of 14 added minutes.
In the 2-1 win at Aston Villa the week before the trip to Luton six minutes were added. In the reverse fixtures against Villa and Luton and the win against Nottingham Forest, six and eight and 12 minutes respectively were added, all with United leading by one goal.
But , yet again, the knock on effect will be referees reluctant to give decisions to United in case of something like this.
In the last two away games we’ve seen Casemiro booked for opponents just falling down in front of him and against Luton Kobbie Mainoo was booked for one the best and cleanest tackles you’ll see all season.
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