Arsenal Implode while United put 9 past The Saints

 It is impossible to go a whole gameweek without having a controversy take place in the premier league. Two atrocious results took place last night at the Molineux Stadium and Old Trafford with both Arsenal and Southampton seeing two red cards each and interestingly both games had one controversial red received.

Lets start of with the controversy which took place at the Molineux Stadium. Arsenal had been dominating wolves for 47 mins of the first half ( 45 + 2 ), where they had Bukayo Saka hitting the post in the opening minutes, a goal ruled out due to Lacazette being offside and then finally having Pepe break the deadlock with a wonderful goal from his weaker foot which stunned everyone due to him being known as a one footed player. The first controversy begins when Leno shot the ball across the half way line at the 47th minute and the referee had his whistle in his mouth but didn’t blow it despite the time being up which lead to the counter where Willian Jose from Wolves goes down due to minimal contact by David Luiz. Now here is where things get messi, while being shown the replay, it is evident that Luiz is trying to get back into his position and is avoiding making contact, but due to Jose’s boot hitting Luiz’s knee, He trips and gets awarded the penalty and also manages to get Luiz sent off. The outrageous thing is that the VAR replay was not shown to the viewers and many people disagree with the sending off and believe it was purely done based on Davids reputation to be clumsy.  Mikel Arteta himself said that he had watched the replay 10 time from 5 different angles and couldn't see the contact.

Even if there is an argument for the challenge being a foul, The Double Jeopardy rule should’ve been taken into consideration as even thought there was a foul, it was purely accidental as it is evident Luiz is trying to pull out of the challenge and should’ve thus been giving a warning yellow card. However Walton an ex referee said that intent doesn’t come into the standard law as we can’t read the mind of a player which only lead to more controversies and theories unravelling.

A similar incident took place at Old Trafford during the match between Manchester United and Southampton when Jan Bednarek received a red card for bringing down Anthony Martial. Jan claimed that he heard Martial say its not a foul. Even here we could see Bednarek trying to swerve and avoid making any contact with Martial which agains leads to this foul being unintentional.

The official FA rules state: 'Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offending player is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.) the offending player must be sent off.’

This rule basically tells us that a player can get away with a yellow card if he dives into the tackle and attempt to go for the ball rather than pulling out of a challenge. This rule needs to be revised as even though it was just a paper cut to a gun wound for the Saints, it cost a dominating arsenal three crucial points.