Manchester United head coach, Michael Carrick, has criticised referee Stuart Attwell, describing key decisions as “baffling” and “astonishing” after his side’s 2-2 Premier League draw with AFC Bournemouth.
United went ahead in the 61st minute through a penalty converted by Bruno Fernandes after Álex Jiménez was adjudged to have pulled Matheus Cunha inside the area.
Controversy followed soon after when Amad Diallo went down under a challenge from Adrien Truffert, but VAR ruled the contact “was not sufficient for a foul,” denying United a second penalty. Moments later, Bournemouth broke forward and equalised through Ryan Christie.
The visitors regained the lead in the 71st minute when James Hill turned a Fernandes corner into his own net. However, the game swung again after Harry Maguire was sent off for a push on Evanilson in the box, with Bournemouth converting the resulting penalty to make it 2-2.
While Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola insisted the Diallo incident was “never a penalty,” Carrick argued both situations involving Cunha and Diallo were identical.
“He’s definitely got one of them wrong because he’s given one penalty for us for the same thing that he’s not given one,” Carrick told a news conference.
“There’s a two-arm grab. The Matheus one he gives, the second one on Amad he doesn’t, which I think is almost identical, really. If you have two hands on someone in the box and they go over and they’re in control of the ball, for me it’s two penalties.
“It will be interesting to see which one they acknowledge is wrong: the one we got or the one we didn’t get.
“It’s a huge moment. They don’t give it, they go down the other end and score and then it becomes all of a sudden, ‘oh, it needs to be a bigger penalty to overturn,’ just because they scored, when actually it’s a penalty and it should be a penalty if you’ve already given one.
“It’s baffling really to make sense of that. And because they score, the game flips a little bit and changes.
“We defended with the 10 men after all that very well. But the penalty one is just astonishing, I have to say. One of them must be wrong.”
Despite the result, Manchester United remain third in the table and will be hoping rivals drop points in the race for a top-five finish and qualification for next season’s Champions League.
