Arsenal and refereeing decisions have not had a harmonious relationship but in the Gunners’ weekend win over Leicester City something magical happened. After Darren England had initially given a penalty for Jamie Vardy’s attempt to fool the official with his theatrics after a collision with Aaron Ramsdale, former Premier League referee Mike Dean had a look through VAR.
Assessing the replays, Arsenal waited and eventually, Dean recommended England go and look at the screen to indicate he had potentially made an error of judgement. As England went over to the screen, new signing Oleksandr Zinchenko sneakily made his way over to catch a glimpse of the screen.
Watching on, the Ukrainian and the rest of the Emirates held their breath as the replays were shown to the match referee. Eventually, England gestured to show that the penalty was to be overruled and a goal kick given to Arsenal instead.
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It was this that sparked a huge cheer from the crowd. Although images of Zinchenko’s reaction have since spread, and it is fair to say the summer signing captured the emotion of everyone in the ground and those keeping track of the game outside the ground.
Pure elation. Arsenal suffered from some unfortunate decisions last season, and plenty was made of the lack of VAR calls that fell the Gunners way.
The unshakable irony that it was Mike Dean who had made the call was not lost on anyone either. The now retired match official will be exclusively in the VAR room for the campaign.
Dean has made some controversial decisions when officiating Arsenal matches. He also drew criticism for a video appearing to show him celebrating when allowing a Tottenham goal, although he has since explained this wasn’t the case.
Speaking on That Peter Crouch Podcast , “I played on and you kind of don’t play on when it’s in the box, it’s the wrong thing to do because you don’t play advantage in the box; you either give a pen or you do nothing.
“When it went into the back of the net I said, ‘that’ll do for me, goal’ and I was pointing to the centre circle. I didn’t realise I was doing it until they showed it on the screen. That’s probably the most bizarre thing I’ve done.”
That said, the delight of Zinchenko will surely be a recurring image of the season. There’s an excitement about Arsenal that has got nearly the whole fanbase buying into the potential of this season.
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