The France midfielder felt the officials got some key decisions wrong during the Red Devil’s win at Turf Moor
Paul Pogba would not be drawn on the VAR controversy during Manchester United’s victory at Burnley, saying he has to keep calm about decisions because “he is not the boss” on the pitch.
The incident occurred during the first half when Burnley defender Robbie Brady appeared to have fouled Edinson Cavani when he was through on goal, which would have been red card for denial of a goalscoring opportunity.
Referee Kevin Friend reviewed the incident on the VAR monitor, but wiped out Brady’s foul when he saw a late challenge by Luke Shaw in the build-up to the incident which resulted in the Manchester United man being booked instead.
Moments later Harry Maguire thought he had headed Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side into the lead only for Friend to rule it out for a foul on Erik Pieters.
Despite that controversy, United still managed to battle their way to a 1-0 victory courtesy of Pogba’s 71st-minute strike, with the three points lifting the Red Devils above Liverpool to the top of the Premier League ahead of their trip to Anfield on Sunday.
When asked about the decisions Pogba said he disagreed with the officials but admitted he had little choice but to accept them.
“Obviously it’s hard but you have to be professional and we knew it wasn’t going to be easy with the decision of the referee which I didn’t agree with,” he told Sky Sports. “But I’m not the boss on the pitch so we just have to keep calm and keep focused and of course we scored and won the game.”
On Maguire’s disallowed goal, he added: “It was a goal for sure – I don’t know what happened. It was a beautiful goal and the referee decided that it was not. It was a strange decision but we got the result we wanted so we’re happy.”
United have now won five and drawn one of their last seven Premier League games to top the table at this stage of the season for the first time since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013. Pogba, however, is not getting carried away and simply wants to focus on the next game.
“We know that the game today was very hard, very difficult and obviously we wanted to win. We know it’s not easy to play here. We got the three points and we’re happy for that but there’s still a long way and now we focus again until the end of the season,” he said.
“I’m always happy when I win – today we won and I’m happy we play well. Still a long way to go and we have big games to go so we have to focus on that.”
