Gunners denied vital points against Brighton
Arsenal seemed on course for maximum points heading into the international break as Mikel Arteta's side took a 1-0 lead into half-time against Brighton at the Emirates Stadium.
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But just five minutes into the second half, the Gunners were controversially reduced to ten men when Chris Kavanagh sent off Declan Rice for a second bookable offence, tapping the ball away before being cleaned out by Joel Veltman, which the referee deemed to be delaying the restart.
Brighton scored minutes later, and the game finished 1-1 with Arsenal holding onto a point rather than the three that they had initially set out for.
Arsenal vs Brighton: A game of two halves
Stats via Fotmob
1st Half
2nd Half
Arsenal
Brighton
Arsenal
Brighton
Possession
47%
53%
24%
76%
Shots
6
3
5
19
Shots on target
5
0
2
4
Big chances
3
0
2
3
xG
0.98
0.08
1.09
1.74
After the game, both Mikel Arteta and Bukayo Saka bemoaned the lack of consistency in the decision to send Rice off, with Joao Pedro having escaped a yellow for kicking the ball away in the first half, while Gunners fans all over social media fumed at how rarely such offences are actually punished.
"I don’t like to put the whole game on the referee but we just want some consistency" - Bukayo Saka
Sky Sports' ref watch proves Arsenal's point
Speaking in the wake of the game Sky Sport's in-studio referee Dermot Gallagher backed up the decision made by the referee.
"The players were told at the start of the season that if you delay the restart, you run the risk [of a booking], it was quite clear", the former Premier League official explained. "You think someone else should've got a yellow card, but that doesn't exonerate what he did.
"Two things don't help him. He knows what he's doing, and secondly the touchline - people say he didn't knock it very far, but he knocks it off the field and so they definitely can't restart play. Chris Kavanagh has got nowhere to go. The second yellow is mandatory."
Odegaard-Rice-Arsenal-Brighton
But Arsenal fans have a reputation for being detectives on social media, and have switched their focus from tracking transfer targets' planes to finding precedent for Rice's red card. Now, they have found just that.
Looking at an eerily similar incident from 2021 involving former Arsenal academy man Henri Lansbury, a previous episode of Sky's ref watch saw the entire studio - Gallagher included - fail to even mention whether the man kicked should be booked, but rather discuss why a red card was not brandished for the offender (Veltman in Saturday's case), with Gallagher himself admitting: "I just don't understand why it isn't a red card."
Maybe Arteta and Arsenal fans have a point about the lack of consistency after all...
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