Manchester United were forced to recover from behind as they chased their first Premier League win of the 2026\/27 campaign, and the decisive moment came with a hefty dose of fortune.<\/p>\n
After the interval, the Red Devils started at a furious pace and soon found the goal that put them ahead. Harry Maguire won the ball on the edge of the box, surged into the area and struck at goal, but the finish was heavily deflected by Ipswich defender Jacob Greaves and ended up in the net.<\/p>\n
The twist was that Maguire\u2019s attempt would not have stood had he actually hit the target himself. Because his shot was off target, the goal was credited as an own goal by Greaves, and that distinction proved decisive.<\/p>\n
There was, however, an immediate question over the build-up. Maguire\u2019s arm had made contact with the ball as he regained possession, raising the possibility of a handball offence. In normal circumstances that might have brought the move under scrutiny, but the key technical detail was that Maguire was not the direct scorer. The action was judged to be accidental, and VAR did not intervene to overturn the goal.<\/p>\n
The Laws of the Game state: \u201cIt is an offense if a player scores in the opponents\u2019 goal … immediately after the ball has touched their hand\/arm, even if accidental.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, Maguire would have been penalised had he finished the move himself. Because his effort went wide before the deflection took effect, the goal was allowed to stand. A cleaner strike from the centre back, one that needed no deflection to go in, would actually have been ruled out.<\/p>\n
The Premier League Match Center confirmed: \u201cThe referee\u2019s call of goal for Manchester United was checked and confirmed by VAR\u2014with it deemed that Maguire was not the immediate goalscorer after an accidental handball.\u201d VAR also told Craig Pawson: \u201cIt\u2019s an own goal and the accidental handball is not punishable, so we recommend you award the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maguire\u2019s shot was off target, so United\u2019s goal stood after VAR checked the accidental handball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1742,179],"tags":[1836,1162],"class_list":["post-18852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ipswich-town","category-manchester-united","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}