Arsenal and Newcastle United were embroiled in an early VAR controversy on Sunday when a penalty award to Arsenal was withdrawn following a prolonged review. Referee Jarred Gillett initially signalled for a spot kick, then paused while the incident was examined by VAR. That process culminated in an on-field review and the original decision was overturned as officials probed whether Nick Pope touched the ball after Gy\u00f6keres had made contact.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter review, the Newcastle goalkeeper plays the ball and there is no foul. The final decision is drop ball,\u201d Gillett said. The referee further told Declan Rice, revealed because of a hot mic, that Pope got a touch on the ball with his toe. The home support continued singing on, \u201cSame old Arsenal, always cheating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commentary on the call was immediate. Speaking for Sky Sports, Gary Neville said: \u201cI mean Viktor Gy\u00f6keres kicks it against Nick Pope\u2019s feet. Pope has still blocked Viktor Gy\u00f6keres. Gy\u00f6keres touches the ball and then there is a touch and then he takes him down after that. I\u2019m a little bit torn. I think the referee is debating it with Stockley Park.\u201d<\/p>\n
The match moved on from the VAR drama and Newcastle fashioned the opener in the 34th minute. Nick Woltemade converted from a clever set piece routine to put Newcastle ahead.<\/p>\n
This fixture has a history of difficulty for Arsenal. Mikel Arteta previously criticised VAR in 2023 while on the road at St. James\u2019 Park, calling it a \u2018disgrace.\u2019 The Gunners have also struggled at this ground in recent seasons, having lost three of their last four visits there. The overturned penalty and the subsequent set piece goal ensured the game contained both refereeing debate and decisive moments on the pitch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VAR overturned Arsenal penalty after on-field review; referee concluded goalkeeper played the ball..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,194,172],"tags":[253],"class_list":["post-3173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-newcastle-united","category-epl","tag-declan-rice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173","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=3173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}