Gerrard refuses to blame VAR after FA Cup exit against Manchester United | Manchester United

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Steven Gerrard declined to blame a long VAR appeal that led to the exclusion of an Aston Villa equalizer for offside for Manchester United’s elimination of his FA Cup teams on Monday night, with the manager urging instead his team to reverse the result when they welcome Saturday in the Premier League.

Villa lost the third round draw at Old Trafford 1-0 after conceding the early lead to Scott McTominays, but then dominated throughout. United also took advantage of their chance as Villa had two goals ruled out in the second half.

The latter was a relatively straightforward offside call against Danny Ings, who had played Ollie Watkins to come home from close range. However, the former was more questionable and involved a delay of more than three minutes, with the VAR calling on referee, Michael Oliver, to rule after Ings scored from close range. Oliver consulted with the field monitor and ultimately decided Villas midfielder Jacob Ramsey was offside and hampered Edinson Cavani in the preparation.

The disappointment was that it took three and a half minutes to fix the problem, Gerrard said. We had the momentum back then and those three and a half minutes really took off in the game. But that’s not the reason we lost. We need to focus on other things, not just the VAR against us. Players have the opportunity to change the mood, to change the feeling [on Saturday] they have the opportunity at Villa Park to rectify the situation.

Gerrard also avoided being taunted throughout the game by the Old Trafford crowd for being a former Liverpool captain. It was relatively quiet, I went to noisier stadiums than this one, he said. It was a good Cup game, a good atmosphere but in terms of what I got, water on a duck’s back.

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Meanwhile United interim manager Ralf Rangnick has defended Marcus Rashford, who has played poorly against Villa and has now gone 11 games without scoring, his worst streak since the 2016-17 season.

He is pushing hard, has done well in training over the past two days, the 63-year-old said. In the first half we found it quite often – the second half less often and so we decided to make changes with Anthony Elanga and Jesse Lingard. [coming on for Rashford and Bruno Fernandes].

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