ESPN have claimed that Edson Alvarez was not fouled against Manchester United, despite Casemiro having him in a headlock.

Over the past few weeks, West Ham have been on the wrong end of a fair few controversial VAR decisions. In the game against Sheffield United alone there were multiple awful decisions that caused the Hammers to drop two points.

Unfortunately, many fans agree that they were victims of yet another VAR failure against Manchester United. During a West Ham corner, Casemiro was marking Edson Alvarez and ended up getting him in a near headlock. 

For whatever reason, ESPN seem to completely disregard this though, going as far as to blame the Mexican. “There’s all kinds of holding and grappling off the ball on every set piece,” they stated. “It can be argued that this should be penalised more often to discourage players from trying it, yet the VAR will usually get involved only if the holding has a material impact.”

“While the holding could be considered to have restricted Álvarez’s ability to properly deflect Soucek’s header into the goal, he too has an arm around the Manchester United player and is backing in, so there would need to be more than a simple holding offence from Casemiro the only real consideration for the VAR would be the position of Casemiro’s arms towards Álvarez’s neck.”

“It looks far worse on still images that in real time, and it’s unlikely to have sufficient impact for a VAR review in the Premier League.”

In absolutely no world is it acceptable for a player to pace their hands round another’s neck, even if they were backing into them. While we have seen some ridiculously fouls given from similar positions, this was almost certainly a penalty.