The Premier League is back, and it’s back with a bang. After two weeks off for the international break, domestic top-flight football returned in England, and it did not disappoint.
From red cards to disallowed goals, shocks to VAR checks, it had a bit of everything across nine games (with Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest to play on Monday). Arsenal were one of the unwanted teams to miss out on the fun.
Whilst Manchester City had Stockley Park to thank for their late winner at Wolves and Liverpool benefited at home to Chelsea, Mikel Arteta’s side were punished through technology. Not only was William Saliba sent off, David Raya would later concede a penalty to put the game past recovery.
For the third time already in eight league games it was the Gunners shooting themselves in the foot, as Declan Rice put it. This time, instead of lacking discipline and perhaps falling slightly the wrong side of luck with yellow cards brandished for delaying the start of play, there were less complaints to be had.
Arteta himself put up little fight. Rice bemoaned the unnecessary pressure Arsenal were putting on Arsenal, rather than being too defiant and hitting back at officials. Saliba hasn’t said a peep in the aftermath.
There was lots to dive into at the Vitality Stadium. Here, football.london has the Premier League’s given reasoning for everything that impacted Arsenal on a night to forget.
“The referee gave Saliba a yellow card for a challenge on Evanilson,” the Match Centre account on X (formerly Twitter) confirmed at 6.08pm on Saturday evening. “The VAR deemed that Saliba denied an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and recommended an on-field review. The referee then upgraded the yellow to a red card.”
Arsenal fans were frustrated with the decision. Evanilson could not have been offside, though, with Leandro Trossard playing an errant backpass for him to run onto, and Howard Webb unable to influence matters even if he did appear to be listening into the VAR communications from pitchside.
Things got worse an hour later. “The referee awarded a penalty for a foul by Raya on Evanilson,” Match Centre explains. “The VAR checked and confirmed the referee’s call, deeming that contact was sufficient for a penalty.”
Raya was awarded with a yellow card rather than a red one because of the double jeopardy rule, which states players shouldn’t be sent off if there was a reasonable attempt to play the ball. As opposed to Saliba, who was behind Evanilson and nowhere near the ball, Raya was inside his box and trying to stop himself from being rounded.
Unfortunately for Arsenal, there was little else to pick apart other than a lacklustre start to the game and struggles to get back into it once down to 10 men. Unlike against both Brighton and Manchester City, where they had leads to defend, going a man down with an hour of regulation time left was too much to cope with.
The Premier League addressed each incident with the sort of clarity Arteta will have to use in order to address the problems causing his squad trouble.
