Stoney rues lack of VAR after derby loss

You wonder if Casey Stoney has revised her opposition to VAR, or if her calls for goal-line technology in the women’s game now have greater credence in light of an afternoon when the Manchester United manager saw two goals disallowed and a third rescinded only for the referee to about-turn and give it anyway.

United could hardly dly dispute the first – a Katie Zelem corner floated beneath the bar, only y for Kirsty Hanson to back into City goalkeeper Ellie Roebuck uck and surrender the kind of foul that always falls in a keeper’s favour. No one is any wiser if the second, a Zelem free-kick prodded home ome at the far post by Lizzie e Arnot on 72 minutes, actually ctually crossed the line before Roebuck clawed it away, not least because the e most favourably-positioned ed television camera was behind the goal and nd the line obscured amid mid a pack of bodies. “We’ve got people in line with it and d they’ve seen that it ’s over,” Stoney said. “People up in the control room, people up in the boxes.

“They said, straight away, it ’s over, quite considerably over. It looked [like] it to me. We’re unfortunate not to be in the hat tomorrow.”

Stoney acknowledged that her team ultimately needed to defend better given that in the ensuing seconds Jill Scott planted a low, scurrying finish from 20 yards beyond United goalkeeper Mary Earps to restore City’s two-goal lead and seemingly put the game beyond United’s reach. Ellen White opened the scoring, Abbie McManus spurning a back-pass to Earps for White to hurtle into her trademark dinked finish.

Her second, peeling ahead of her marker to lift the ball over Earps from Lauren Hemp’s cross, doubled City’s lead.

White initially looked to miss City forward Georgia Stanway, deployed at right-back to cover for the injured Aoife Mannion and a Matilde Fidalgo struggling to adapt to the WSL. United’s introduction of Lauren James paid immediate dividends when the teenager latched on to a ball from range, beat Keira Walsh with a back-heel and nudged low past Roebuck. McManus’s was-itwasn’t-it goal was disallowed just as United grew in stature.

A Zelem corner curling under the bar and deflecting off the back of Hemp’s head – initially disallowed but then given – gave them hope of a late fightback but they could not find a leveller.