- Maguire headed in a stoppage time winner for Man United against Leicester
- Replays showed the Man United defender had scored from an offside position
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Leicester City boss Ruud van Nistelrooy let rip at the officials and fumed at Manchester United winning the match in ‘offside time’ rather than ‘Fergie time’ following a contentious Harry Maguire winner.
The game looked to be heading to extra-time right up until the 93rd-minute when Maguire found himself unmarked at the back post to head in Bruno Fernandes’ free-kick, ensuring United progress to the fifth round of the FA Cup.
But replays clearly showed that Maguire scored from an offside position. There was also plenty of grievance on the Leicester City bench for the award of the free-kick in the first place.
With no VAR in operation until the fifth round of the FA Cup onwards, the decision fell to the human eye and Van Nistelrooy’s Foxes came out on the wrong side of it in the most agonising fashion.
‘We are not defeated in Fergie time, we are defeated in offside time,’ a ticked off Van Nistelrooy said.
‘The game was decided on a mistake, it’s clear. This wasn’t necessary.
‘VAR you have [when] it’s a couple centimetres, a couple of inches, this was half a metre, clear in line.
‘We deserved to go into extra time, go for the battle in extra time and maybe penalties.
‘Decisions like these in our level are hard to swallow.’
Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane was incredulous on TV at the winning goal as he too took aim at the officials.
‘The linesman has to see it [Maguire being offside],’ Keane said.
‘United got out of jail tonight. The performance itself was nowhere near good enough.’
Van Nistelrooy’s counterpart Ruben Amorim could sympathise with the Leicester boss at the injustice of the cup exit.
But after facing a difficult spell of his own, Amorim felt they needed a slice of luck however they could get it.
‘We need a lot of things [that are] nothing to do with luck, it has to do with quality of the work, we need to improve every detail of the game, energy, my work with them has to be so much better, but sometimes you need a little bit of luck and today we had.
‘It’s not luck because with VAR it was not a goal and I think it’s important to have because it’s fair.
‘It’s really hard to lose one game in the last minute with an offside play, but sometimes we deserve a little bit of luck.’
