David Moyes left furious as VAR is constantly going against West Ham United.

While every club has fallen victim to a poor VAR decision, it feels like West Ham have been bombarded with them over the past couple of weeks. Freiburg away and Burnley at home saw two blatant handballs not given as penalties but, when it is West Ham who does it against Aston Villa, they get two debatable goals chalked off.

In fairness, the one that was disallowed at the very end of the game was almost definitely a handball by Tomas Soucek but, even then, why did it take so long for it to be decided? You have to question whether the ‘clear and obvious’ part of VAR is even being considered anymore.

Unsurprisingly, David Moyes was far from happy with the decisions made by the VAR team and how little has been going his way recently. “We think they are goals but VAR are the ones who decide, not us,” he stated. “Burnley last week, Freiburg last week, two today. Every one of them has gone against us on handball situations so it’s hard to take.”

“You’ve got VAR so if VAR thinks it’s right they’ve got a chance to look at things so they must be right. Football people see things differently. Maybe that’s where I see some of them differently.”

“Undoubtedly you might think that some of them hit people’s arms and it does and if that’s the rule we have to go with the rule. But we had two that hit people’s arms last week, not one of them went our way. Not one of them.”

Understandably, VAR has taken the majority of the criticism from West Ham fans and while there is no doubt that some of the instances are down to the technology as well as the people using it, you have to question to what extent the law makers are to blame. After all, the handball rule is utterly confusing and bizarre even to the professionals – why does it need to be so complicated? 

Either way, West Ham have every reason to feel hard done by but they simply didn’t do enough to win the game. They had their chances to seal the victory but their second-half display just was not good enough. Much like with the Freiburg and Germany games, you can question the officiating but that does not take the responsibility away from the team.