Nani was the beneficiary of the call, poking the ball into an empty net to make it 2-0 after Spurs goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes had lined up what he believed to be a free-kick for handball against the Portuguese.

The winger certainly handled the ball after seeing a penalty appeal turned down but there was no free-kick awarded, meaning the ball was technically active when Gomes grounded it.

Redknapp was furious with the award, labelling the situation "farcical" and "scandalous", but while he remained perplexed by the officials' refusal to strike the goal from the record, he accepts that with just six minutes remaining, defeat was imminent anyway.

"There was no whistle but everyone saw him handle it. It's a free-kick but he hasn't given anything," said Redknapp of referee Mark Clattenburg, the same man who memorably declined to give Pedro Mendes' 'goal' against Roy Carroll on the same ground five years ago.

"He probably hasn't seen it and he's wondering why Gomes isn't kicking the ball.

"I've always thought Mark Clattenburg was a good referee - and he is a good referee - but he made a mess of the situation."

Redknapp explained: "We were losing 1-0 so I'm not going to say we we're going to win the game and I'm not making excuses. I'm just talking about one incident.

"We were losing and chances are we were going to lose anyway - but we might have scored, you never know, we just didn't get the opportunity to find out.

"I don't go around blaming referees. If we get beaten I blame myself and the players, I don't blame refs. I won't say we were beaten because of that, because it's long odds we'd have got beaten 1-0.

"But we were still in the game because it was evenly balanced throughout."

In his post-match analysis United boss Sir Alex Ferguson suggested Gomes was to blame for not playing to the whistle - although Redknapp insists the Scot was unsure at the final whistle exactly what had transpired.

"When I got up Alex said, 'I don't know what happened, do you know?', and I said, 'Yeah, it was a handball'. He hadn't seen it."

Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand had a better view of things and used his Twitter account to have his say.

Ferdinand wrote: "I went over to the referee just to clarify that he never blew his whistle. Linesman was saying it was handball, ref never gave it. Play on.

"Anyway, the decisions all level out over the season."