The clocks may change, but Manchester United stay the same. If anything can be said for Erik ten Hag’s struggling squad, it’s their knack for finding new and disappointing ways to come up short.

There will, as usual, be reasons offered. There will be cries of unfairness, as Ten Hag never lacks an excuse, and here, playing away against one of the Premier League’s weaker teams, they found a credible one.

The penalty that handed West Ham the victory was a farce, a perfect example of the inconsistencies that plague the VAR era, where a single freeze-frame can obscure common sense.

In this instance, VAR flagged a foul by Matthijs de Ligt on Danny Ings for contact that seemed unavoidable.

The box was crowded, and the offense, if it even happened, was so minimal that it raises questions as to how VAR official Michael Oliver saw a “clear and obvious error” from referee David Coote. The fact that Oliver took two minutes to identify the issue speaks volumes.

This loss was rooted in United’s own lack of sharpness in the box, highlighted by Diogo Dalot’s glaring open-goal miss and the lingering question: how could West Ham spend so much over the summer yet still look lackluster?

If this marks the end for Ten Hag, as his higher-ups are reportedly exploring other options, his team’s wastefulness on the field was just as much to blame as the controversial calls from Stockley Park.

In the end, it was Ten Hag’s players who allowed the game to hang in the balance, opening the door for West Ham’s late strike.

Their failure to capitalize before Crysencio Summerville’s go-ahead goal and inability to regroup after Casemiro’s equalizer left them vulnerable.