Mikel Arteta may soon need extra storage for the collection.<\/p>\n
At Anfield, the Arsenal manager had already been arguing that Jurri\u00ebn Timber\u2019s pull on Alexander Isak should have brought a penalty, only for the decision to go the other way. A week later, the same theme returned at the Emirates, with Arsenal on the receiving end of another strange intervention from the officials, this time involving Kai Havertz and Hull City\u2019s Nobel Mendy.<\/p>\n
Havertz was hauled down in the box by Mendy, but no whistle came immediately and play was allowed to continue for several minutes. The move carried on until referee Farai Hallam finally stopped the game after a Hull attack had developed at the other end. What followed only added to the confusion.<\/p>\n
After going to the touchline monitor, Hallam informed the crowd: \u201cAfter review, there is a holding offense by Blue No. 32 on Red No. 29,\u201d and the initial reaction in the stadium suggested a penalty might be coming. But the decision then shifted. \u201cHowever, Red No. 29 is in an offside position, so the final decision will be a free kick for offside to Hull City.\u201d<\/p>\n
That explanation did not settle matters. The sequence looked like a needless interruption to many inside the ground, and the laws of the game point in a different direction. Law 11 in the FA Handbook states: \u201cIn situations where … a player in an offside position is moving towards the ball with the intention of playing the ball and is fouled before playing or attempting to play the ball, or challenging an opponent for the ball, the foul is penalized as it has occurred before the offside offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, Havertz\u2019s position beyond the last defender should not have outweighed the foul that happened first.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should really have been given as a penalty kick,\u201d Darren Cann, the former World Cup final assistant referee, told BBC\u2019s Match of the Day.<\/p>\n
Arsenal were spared in the end by Martin \u00d8degaard, whose 72nd-minute finish secured a 1-0 win. Arteta, though, stopped short of a full condemnation of the officials. \u201cI was surprised because when they sent the referee to the monitor, I was being told it was a clear penalty for a pull,\u201d he said. \u201cThey decided not to give it because of the starting position of Kai\u2014he was offside\u2014so I\u2019m not sure what the interpretation is, I\u2019m sure they will make it clear to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another disputed VAR call left Arteta puzzled, but Arsenal still beat Hull City 1-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,172,2024],"tags":[1836,1162,59],"class_list":["post-22288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-match-reports","category-epl","category-refereeing","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}