Arsenal have had poor luck in the form of officiating decisions throughout their chase for the Premier League title this season. The weekend draw with Brentford saw the situation reach a new peak with VAR official Lee Mason forgetting to check Christian Norgaard’s position in the build-up to Ivan Toney’s equaliser that should not have stood.
However, outside of Arsenal, it was not the only game of the weekend to face controversial VAR errors. Chelsea saw a penalty not given despite a seemingly blatant handball from Tomas Soucek and Brighton missed out on a goal as Pervis Estupinan was deemed offside despite VAR official John Brooks applying the offside lines to the wrong Crystal Palace defender.
Brooks was due to take to the video assistant referee technology for the game between Arsenal and Manchester City and tonight’s clash with Liverpool and Everton. However, Brooks has now been removed from both of the games in light of the weekend’s error.
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Brooks has been replaced by David Coote and Andre Marriner who will both be in place at Stockley Park to assess all the officiating decisions for the big title decider on Wednesday night. Mikel Arteta criticised the decision-making after the game and therefore should be pleased with the retrospective action.
However, Coote who is set to be in charge of the VAR has not escaped his own controversy with Arsenal and decisions. Coote took charge of the recent defeat against Everton which saw a penalty call between Gabriel Magalhães and Neal Maupay not given.
In 2020, Coote was relieved of a weekend’s refereeing and VAR duties after making a big mistake in the Merseyside derby. Coote failed to check for a red card offence for Jordan Pickford’s horror challenge against Virgil van Dijk.
Later in the game, Jordan Henderson’s late winner was ruled out by VAR for a tight offside despite former referee Mark Halsey telling TalkSport he couldn’t see why. He said: “I couldn’t see what part of his body was offside. When we looked at it when we saw it in real-time, then we saw it in replay and slow-motion, they can put those lines anywhere. For me, we have got to be giving those. If you cannot tell within the first replay and when you put those lines then it’s a goal.”
Arsenal will hope that the refereeing focus is absent from the massive game on Wednesday. Despite the VAR controversy affecting a number of games this season for the Gunners, ultimately the performance can take away all focus from the officials and Arteta will certainly be reminding his players of this.
Arsenal need to control what they control and a strong response to the previous three disappointing results is exactly that. From a fan perspective, fingers are crossed that everything plays out as it is supposed to.
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