My apologies for the oversight. Let me expand the content further to reach 600 words:
David Moyes turned the spotlight on referees’ chief Howard Webb after West Ham were on the wrong end of the VAR calls against Aston Villa.
The Hammers had two goals chalked off for handball as they were held to a draw by Unai Emery’s side. The first was scored by Michail Antonio and the second deep into injury time when the ball went in off Jarrod Bowen after Tomas Soucek handled, which led to a check of almost six minutes.
In the first half, Mohammed Kudus also had the ball in the net though an earlier foul on Emiliano Martinez led to that strike being ruled out too. A frustrated Moyes said: “I’ve got nothing to say on the VAR decisions. You can contact Howard [Webb] yourselves and get the results.”
Asked if he will contact PGMOL boss Webb himself, Moyes said: “No.”
And he added: “Burnley last week, Freiburg last week, two today. Four handballs this week that didn’t go for us.
“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. I think football people see things differently. We think they are goals but VAR are the ones who decide, not us.”
Boos rang out around the London Stadium when the whistle followed not long after West Ham thought they had won the game. On the length of the check, Moyes said: “It probably meant that they thought they’d seen something that was wrong. It’s up to them how long they take.”
Unai Emery hailed ‘fantastic’ Nicolo Zaniolo and hopes that the attacking midfielder remains in the right mood for the rest of the season. Zaniolo marked his second-half cameo off the bench with the Villa equaliser and Emery said: “Today, the players who were on the bench, they were focused.
“Nicolo is one of them. His impact was fantastic today and hopefully we can have him in this mood for the rest of the season.”
Villa extended their lead over fifth placed Spurs to three points with the draw but failed to take full advantage of the Londoners’ loss to Fulham a day earlier. Emery said: “This point is important because we are still fourth.
“I will want to wait until the day 33 or 34 to change our objective if we keep this position. We are still fighting for it.
“We have other teams behind us and they could get to us. Until the day 33 or 34, I am not speaking about the new objective to be in the top four or top five. We have to be happy, we have to be proud of our work until today.
“We have to respect the competition. Now we are going to rest and we are adding more and more players progressively, increasing in our squad players who go to their national team. I think this is good because it is very good news for us as they are playing well.”