Luke Shaw has claimed referee Stuart Attwell told his Manchester United teammate Harry Maguire he declined to award a penalty against Chelsea for an apparent handball because “it’s going to cause a lot of talk about it afterwards”.
Video replays appeared to show Callum Hudson-Odoi handling the ball in United’s penalty area while he battled for possession with Mason Greenwood.
Referee Attwell was eventually called over to look at the VAR monitor but upon seeing the replays, stuck by his original decision not to award a penalty.
Shaw made the claim after the final whistle of United’s goalless encounter with the Blues at Stamford Bridge. The incident took place during a less-than-action-packed first half and after the VAR check the left-back says Attwell spoke to Maguire.
“At the time I saw a handball. I didn’t know if it was Mason Greenwood or Callum Hudson-Odoi. I just carried on,” Shaw told Sky Sports.
“I didn’t even know there was a VAR check. I don’t know why they stopped it. If it was a penalty… but if they didn’t think it was a penalty I don’t know why they needed to stop.
“The referee even said to H (Maguire), I heard him say, ‘if I say it’s a penalty then it’s going to cause a lot of talk about it afterwards.’ So I don’t know what happened there.
“(Maguire) said they got told it was a penalty. They got told it was a penalty by VAR so… I’m not sure. I don’t understand. If he’s going to stop then you think he is going to give a penalty. We had the ball, we were attacking so it’s confusing with this VAR.
“If it’s not going to be a penalty they might as well just carry on the game and not stop the flow of the game. It was another one, that look, I’m not going to moan about it because I don’t think either team did enough to win.”
The Premier League declined i‘s request to offer their version of events.
But the decision not to award a penalty left United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer furious at full time.
“Yep. One hundred per cent. No idea [why it wasn’t given], none whatsoever. Not at all. Especially when he stops [the game] and he walks across to watch it. From here, you can see it’s a handball but you think it’s our player who does it and then when you look at it on the video, it’s taken two points away from us.”
Solskjaer then went on to claim that pressure had been put on Attwell from “outside influences” before the match.
“It’s all these outside influences, even the VAR talk here before the game with Harry, that’s cheeky when they [Chelsea] put that on their website, that’s influencing referees,” he said.
“You can go back and look at the website. You can read it, what they’re saying about all the controversy with Harry Maguire and putting pressure on the referees to give penalties against us.
Solskjaer was seemingly referring to part of a match preview article on the Blues website that reads: “In recent Chelsea meetings the Red Devils’ centre-back has survived VAR reviews of a potential penalty foul on Cesar Azpilicueta and violent challenge on Michy Batshuayi that may well have affected the outcome.”
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