Arsenal have won all four of their opening Premier League games, but it has not always been easy to work out where the line is being drawn by officials this season.
It is usually easier to complain about referees after dropping points, but even after Arsenal came away a 2-0 win at the Stadium of Light, Mikel Arteta however, was still left fuming.
His frustration was understandable. Sunderland had been awarded the chance to take the lead from the penalty spot early in the second half, only for David Raya to save from Enzo Le Fée. Two minutes later Bruno Guimaraes scored at the other end and Bukayo Saka eventually added a second.
By the end, the decision had no impact on the result, but it’s the potential that it did hold to change the fixture which Arteta took issue with making clear he felt the decision was “ not acceptable at this level”.
This isn’t the first time the Gunners have found themselves on the wrong side of a decision which should have gone their way Two weeks earlier at Aston Villa, Guimaraes was challenged from behind by Ian Maatsen in stoppage time. Arsenal were leading 1-0 and no penalty was given.
The Premier League’s Key Match Incidents Panel voted last week 5-0 that referee Jarred Gillett had got the decision wrong. It also unanimously decided VAR should have intervened, while Maatsen’s challenge was deemed reckless enough to warrant a second yellow card, which should have resulted in a yellow card.
Arsenal still won and for many, that makes it easier to move on. Arteta has recieved a lot of flak for his comments, despite another win. But a win shouldn’t make the decision itself any less important. If Villa had equalised in the little time remaining, a mistake which now barely registers now would have dominated the discussion for days.
The Sunderland penalty has not yet been through the same KMI process and holding offences inside a crowded penalty area are always going to leave room for interpretation, but it was the explanation given by the referee, then not questioned by the VAR team which is more confusing.
John Brooks described Konsa as being “all over him at the near post facing the wrong way” when penalising the Arsenal defender for his contact with Dan Ballard. VAR then backing that assessment: “I’m happy that it’s a holding offence. The foul is confirmed.”
Except Konsa does not appear to be facing the wrong way when the incident begins. He is looking towards the ball, while Ballard also has hold of him as the pair compete for position.
Maybe the eventual KMI verdict will support Brooks. Maybe it will decide there was enough contact to justify the call. But if the referee’s description of why he has given a penalty does not appear to match what happened, it is difficult to understand why that does not at least warrant another look at the monitor. With the Premier League’s rule changes to cut down on holding, pushing and shoving at corners, the Gunners were heavily mentioned as a side which would suffer. To me, suggesting that Arsenal’s reputation has preceeded them, so much so that VAR haven’t even checked to see if what the referee saw actually aligned with the footage available.
Arteta certainly could not understand it. He said afterwards that he had watched the incident around 20 times and still could not see how a penalty had been awarded.
The Arsenal manager also said decisions like it can “cost you the championship”. In September, with the Gunners sitting on four wins from four, that sounds dramatic. Over a 38-game season decided by fine margins, perhaps it is not.
There were other decisions at Sunderland which are more difficult for Arsenal to complain about.
Arteta was booked in the first half for leaving his technical area and to be fair he probably should have been.
He has spent plenty of time outside it already this season and anyone watching Arsenal will have noticed him wandering down the touchline to give instructions. It became particularly prominent after the Chelsea game, when clips of Arteta well beyond his technical area circulated heavily on social media after the win against the West London club and in the days leading into the Sunderland match.
Then he did it again at the Stadium of Light and, this time, was shown a yellow card. The question is not really whether Arteta deserved the booking. He had been breaking the rule and eventually got punished for it. It is why the same behaviour had been allowed in the games before it and why the standard of refereeing to enforce that rule has been so poor up until that point?
Perhaps Arsenal need their own version of the person tasked with keeping Sean McVay out of trouble on an NFL sideline. The Los Angeles Rams head coach became well known for having a member of staff pull him backwards when he wandered too close to the field during games.
Arteta might appreciate the assistance if it stops him getting booked in future. More seriously, though, there should not need to be a week of viral clips before everybody becomes aware that a rule is going to be enforced.
Allow it repeatedly and then suddenly draw the line elsewhere, and it becomes another area where nobody quite knows what officials will tolerate from one game to the next and makes me believe that Arsenal’s reputation is starting to preceed them. A big issue if an official is coming into the game trying to referee players or the manager, based on what they believe they are going to do.
The same Sunderland game offered a much less dramatic example with throw-ins.
According to timing data compiled by Scott Willis, Sunderland took an average of 22.5 seconds over their throws. Twelve lasted longer than 20 seconds, five went past 30 and three took more than 40.
Arsenal’s average was 12.2 seconds. Three went beyond 20 and none beyond 30.
It would be misleading to simply look at those figures and claim Sunderland repeatedly breached the new five-second restart rule.
Long throws are treated differently. Teams are allowed to set themselves for what is effectively a set-piece routine and the countdown can begin once players are in position. But with Sunderland’s long throws removed, their average was still 17.4 seconds and five took longer than 20.
Again, there is no automatic offence after 10, 15 or 20 seconds. The referee judges when a team is unnecessarily delaying the restart and begins the countdown from there. But that makes the actual implementation worth and yet again, too subjective for a referee.
That leaves a lot in the hands of the official, but Calafiori’s overturned throw shows why the consistency of that judgement matters.
If 18 seconds was enough for Arsenal to lose possession, it is reasonable to ask why Sunderland were allowed to take longer on several occasions without the same consequence.
There was plenty of discussion before the season about reducing delays. If teams discover they can regularly use 15 or 20 seconds before the referee considers starting a countdown, that effectively becomes the standard regardless of how the change was presented during the summer.
Arsenal have been fortunate with decisions too. Gabriel’s challenge at Chelsea was one of them.
There was certainly an argument that the Arsenal defender could have been punished more severely for the high contact, despite both being on the floor, but he remained on the pitch. The Gunners will inevitably have moments like that over a season and pretending otherwise would turn a reasonable discussion about refereeing into another tribal argument. It was an accident, I can see why it wasn’t given as anything, but could also see why if it was… It will be interesting to see what the KMI panel decide.
What happened to Gabriel at Sunderland was the complete opposite though. Booked during a heated exchange between Konsa and Xhaka after Sunderland’s players attempted to push Guimaraes off the pitch. Despite the Brazilian spending much of the incident trying to separate those involved rather than causing the confrontation himself.
It was hardly a season-defining yellow card, but again, it’s another moment which leaves you wondering what exactly the player was being punished for. Perhaps that is the biggest frustration with Premier League refereeing at the moment.
Not every controversial decision has gone against Arsenal and not every decision against them has been wrong. Arteta deserved his booking. Gabriel may have been fortunate at Chelsea. The Konsa decision will eventually have its own verdict.
What is difficult to follow is the movement between those standards and how it feels for Arsenal right now, is that it’s being led by the perception of who the Gunners are and what they have been highlighted as on social media and by the media.
Arteta has been allowed to leave his technical area before suddenly being punished for it. Calafiori lost a throw-in for taking too long on an afternoon when Sunderland were regularly taking longer. Arsenal were denied a penalty at Villa which has since been unanimously judged to have been missed, then conceded one at Sunderland where the referee’s own explanation only created more questions.
Arsenal have won all four games, so this is not an attempt to explain away a bad result. There hasn’t been one. But that is probably what makes it worth asking the question now, before one of these decisions actually does change the outcome of a game. Perhaps other fans feel just as aggrieved for their club too... if so what will change this happening on such a regular basis?
