Slaven Bilic fumes over VAR penalty decision as West Brom suffers an agonizing defeat to Manchester United

Slaven Bilic saw his side suffer double frustration at Old Trafford as Manchester United recorded their first home league win of the season thanks to a Bruno Fernandes penalty.

Albion, seeking his first win since promotion last summer, received a penalty of his own shortly after the restart, after Fernandes appeared to knock down Conor Gallagher.

But, after awarding it, referee David Coote flipped after rewatching the incident on the field side monitor.

Slaven Bilic mourned the misfortune of his West Brom team after losing to Man United

A retaken Bruno Fernandes penalty made the difference as the Red Devils won 1-0 on Saturday

Compounding the injustice, in West Brom’s eyes, Coote soon handed United the decisive penalty after a Darnell Furlong hand, though replays suggested Bilic was correct in claiming that Gallagher had received a foul from Fred in preparation. for the center of Juan Mata.

The fact that goalkeeper Sam Johnstone saved Fernandes’ first kick, only for Coote to order it to be re-executed as he had drifted off his line, only increased Bilic’s anger.

“We started in the second half and they got a little nervous,” he said. “ They wanted to score and they stretched a bit and suddenly we have a chance.

But Albion was denied a penalty after Fernandes showed up to take down Conor Gallagher

Referee David Coote reversed his decision on the field after consulting with the field monitor.

But instead of being, hopefully, 1-0 up, the penalty is not given and, it is not even 0-0, we are one down. That basically kills you in any game, even in the Championship it’s hard to come back from that, much less at Man United.

“Nothing personal, but I am very disappointed with the VAR. I felt like it was little West Brom and the big decisions were against us.

“It was a penalty for Conor Gallagher and I was very disappointed that he missed that and then it was a foul for us before his penalty.”

United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer initially agreed that his team had been lucky enough to escape the decision against them, which came just 50 seconds into the second half.

But on reflection, Solskjaer credited Coote with getting his top decisions right, even though he was less kind to his team’s display as they recorded their first league win at home since early July.

The Croatian coach said he was extremely disappointed with the decision against him.

“We are delighted with the victory,” said Solskjaer. “They were very tight decisions and I think he probably got both penalties right, well three right because Sam was out of line.

But it’s definitely not a step up, performance-wise. We played very well against Everton last time, but they were well below average.

But we got the first win and sometimes three points are more important than performance. Although we need to add the points and move up the table, we have to play better.

‘We know we can play better than this. We certainly could have made it more comfortable if we had risked earlier.

“Towards the end, when you don’t do that, there is always an advantage in the game and we seemed nervous towards the end. It was important to get that win, of course, and you could see, we never had the composure or the quality to get that second goal. ”