Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal side beat Newcastle in the Premier League on Saturday and the manager made headlines after it
A few miles from Wembley on Saturday teatime, Arsenal were making an impressive statement. They are no longer in the FA Cup so Wembley glory is beyond them, but keeping a clean sheet and beating Newcastle at the Emirates was enough to make Manchester City took notice.
Newcastle have been Arsenal’s bogey team so often and Mikel Arteta’s side do not always enjoy the atmosphere and pressure on them playing at home, and in addition to that Eberechi Eze and Kai Havertz suffered injuries while there could also have been a red card given to Newcastle goalkeeper Nick Pope. Despite all this, Arsenal won to return to the top of the table and show that they had been able to put recent defeats to Bournemouth and City behind them.
Arteta had the chance to make Arsenal’s resilience the story coming out of the Emirates on Saturday, a tale of how the team had rebounded from successive losses and done even more to convince their manager they will win the league. With four games left to play, they are where they want to be – at least for now.
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Instead, the Arsenal manager had a whinge. Pope definitely should have been sent off, he moaned, and it was the second incident in as many games that a key decision had gone against them given how Arteta felt Abdukodir Khusanov should have been sent off for brushing Havertz as both raced for the ball at the Etihad.
“It’s a clear red card,” Arteta said of Pope. “I’ve watched it 10 times. If you have ever played football, it is a red card. It’s the second time in two games because I guess Manchester City when Kai Havertz goes through, Khusanov fouls him, 1-1, the title is there… it is a red card, guys. So these are the margins as well and hopefully that’s going to change.”
A few notes, then. The title may well have been Arsenal’s if Khusanov had been sent off at that moment, but it would have been due to a hugely controversial refereeing decision that was out of character with the whole game; Anthony Taylor let Gabriel and Erling Haaland wrestle all match without giving anything so the idea he would have acted on two players barely coming together is fanciful at the very least.
Then there’s the more obvious point of Gabriel escaping a red card for what he did to Haaland at the Etihad, which anyone who has ever played or watched football would tell you should mean the Brazilian was sat in the stands on Saturday rather than helping his team to a clean sheet. It’s very hard to argue that referees are against you when your best player has miraculously survived missing three out of the last five games of the season.
Most important though is that what kind of message does it send out for his players? The team have just returned to winning ways after a difficult few weeks and the manager comes out and says that they need more refereeing decisions to go in their favour.
Maybe it puts pressure on the officials for the remaining games (although that would suggest both that they listen to this stuff and are then actually capable of enacting it) but it is hardly a show of faith in the Arsenal squad to be appealing for help. It could not be more different from Pep Guardiola’s usual mantra of drilling into his players that they cannot make any excuses.
Arsenal felt like they had done well out of City only beating Burnley 1-0 in midweek in a title battle that could come down to goal difference. Similarly, the Blues will have heard the noise coming out of the Emirates on Saturday and felt encouraged that Arteta is focusing on referees rather than the players that can make them irrelevant.
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