Highlights
Referee David Coote made questionable decisions in the Arsenal vs Crystal Palace game.
The inconsistency in refereeing decisions has left many baffled.
Despite the controversial officiating, Arsenal managed to secure a 1-0 win and maintain a perfect start to the Premier League season.
It appears referee David Coote may have made another huge mistake on top of harshly sending Takehiro Tomiyasu off in the most recent Arsenal game.
What’s the latest on David Coote and Arsenal?
On Monday night, the Gunners travelled to Selhurst Park as they took on Crystal Palace in their first away match of the new Premier League season.
It was a closely contested fixture and this is reflected by the scoreline as a single penalty – won by Eddie Nketiah and scored by Martin Odegaard – was enough to see the Gunners win 1-0.
It could have perhaps been a more comfortable win for Mikel Arteta and co, however, had the refereeing been a little more favourable from an Arsenal point of view.
After all, left-back on the day Tomiyasu picked up two yellow cards in the second half which both seemed to be for pretty minimum offences as his dismissal looked to be quite unjust.
He was first booked for time-wasting. Although, statistician Scott Willis pointed out that before conceding, Crystal Palace had throw-ins that took 27, 25, 22, and 22 seconds. And yet it was the Japan international who was punished for being partially involved when Arsenal’s throw-in took 24 seconds to be taken – according to Sky via afcstuff), Tomiyasu held onto the ball for just eight of those seconds before being booked.
As for his second yellow, it appeared as though next to no contact was made with Jordan Ayew and yet referee Coote deemed it sufficient enough to warrant the consequential red card.
This is questionable enough. But to make things worse, footage shared on the game on Twitter shows that the Palace winger – who was also already on a yellow card – made an even worse foul on Bukayo Saka and yet he wasn’t sent off for a second bookable offence.
What was said about Jordan Ayew and Takehiro Tomiyasu?
This sort of inconsistency was noted by a number of journalists and football writers online. For instance, Charles Watts wrote: “That’s so harsh [on Tomiyasu] for a second yellow. There is no shirt tug. Especially as Ayew just got away with a similar foul having already been booked.”
He later added: “The more you watch the clips of Ayew’s foul which didn’t get a yellow and Tomiyasu’s which did, the crazier the decision to send Tomi off becomes. The inconsistency is incredible.”
Writer for football.london Aaron Catterson-Reid added: “My issue with that is Ayew had a yellow then held Saka’s shirt for the foul. But no second yellow was given. Consistency just doesn’t exist.”
After the game was finished, manager Arteta was understandably annoyed but managed to bite his tongue, telling the press: “I prefer not to make comments because for me it’s so obvious.”
All in all, it’s not hard to see why many have been left baffled by the level of officiating in this game and after Manchester United goalkeeper Andre Onana avoided punishment for his wild challenge against Wolves on the opening weekend, it hasn’t exactly been the best start to the seasons from the PGMOL.
As for Arsenal, they managed to cling on for the three points away at Palace, and so they’ve made a perfect start to the season – even in the face of this adversity – with two wins from two.
