In the Premier League's marquee showdown of the weekend, last year's number one and number two faced off in an early clash of titans that already had title implications. Arsenal retooled this summer in order to better pursue Manchester City for a third straight season, bringing in defender Riccardo Calafiori, midfielder Mikel Merino, and forward Raheem Sterling. Sunday was Arsenal's first crack at City this season, and though the visiting side gave up a goal to—who else—Erling Haaland in the ninth minute, the Gunners took control of the match with goals from two defenders: Calafiori tied it up in the 22nd with an incredible rocket from outside the box, and then Gabriel gave Arsenal the lead in the first minute of first half stoppage time with a rising header off a corner.
It looked like Arsenal would go into halftime with a lead and a clear plan for the second half, but then one of the Premier League's "points of emphasis" for this season reared its ugly head. Arsenal sparkplug Leandro Trossard had picked up a yellow card for a tough foul in the 34th minute. There was probably no worry on the Arsenal bench that Trossard would pick up a second yellow; attackers rarely do, both because they are not often in the thick of the defensive action, and because a team loses very little if an attacker decides to play it safe on tackles after picking up a booking.
However, prior to this season, the Premier League announced that delay of game actions would be more consistently penalized this season, and Trossard became the second high-profile victim to this renewed focus, following his teammate Declan Rice's expulsion for a similar infraction against Brighton on Aug. 31. In the sixth minute of stoppage time, Trossard went up for a ball against Bernardo Silva. Trossard was ruled to arrive a bit too early, drawing a foul, though nothing remotely close to a foul that might bring out a second yellow.
However, in a moment of frustration, the Belgian kicked the ball away after the whistle, an understandable if misguided reaction to the foul call. In seasons past, he probably gets a brief talking to from referee Michael Oliver and everyone goes into the locker rooms for halftime shortly after, but Oliver followed the new Premier League guidelines, and booked Trossard once more, sending him off and effectively ruining the match after a riveting first half between title contenders.
In the abstract, Arsenal and Trossard have nothing to complain about. Oliver isn't my favorite referee in the league, but he simply followed the rules as previously announced. Trossard did in fact kick the ball away, and though it is a bit of a subjective decision on whether that was a delay of game, Oliver deeming it a delay is understandable.
However, back in the real world, this is a mess of the Premier League's own making. Every summer, the league institutes these new points of emphasis for refereeing, hoping to crack down on what the league sees as excessive violations of the rules that go unpunished. And every season, these new emphases are followed by the referees ... for about two months. Then everyone slowly but surely slides backwards into the old status quo, and the sport moves on.
To give an example, prior to the 2023-24 season, the league wanted referees to give added time more closely resembling the international game. Both the men's and women's World Cups (in 2022 and 2023, respectively) had upwards of 10 minutes of stoppage time in various matches, as referees were told to keep a stricter tally of wasted time during a half, as dictated by the International Football Association Board, which presides over the sport's rulebook. The Premier League referees followed this at the start of the season, but by November, the stoppage time had slowly crept down until it was indistinguishable from previous seasons. This season, the league even instituted a new rule—that referees would only count time after a goal towards stoppage time if that time exceeded 30 seconds—meant to further lower the added minutes at the end of halves.
This delay of game change feels like it will follow the same trajectory as the stoppage time change, given that it is at referees' discretion. These referees have been officiating the sport in mostly similar ways for their entire careers, and it's only natural that as the season moves further away from the announcement of these new points of emphasis, the referees will also revert back to their usual decisions.
It is only unlucky then for Arsenal that it played Manchester City so early in the season, and Trossard forgot to control his emotions at a pivotal time. Had this occurred in, say, December, I would be willing to wager that Trossard would have gotten away with the post-foul kick. It's a shame, then, because the first half of Sunday's match was so good, with City controlling the ball, but Arsenal striking back repeatedly going the other way.
Down a player, and nursing a one-goal lead in a match that would be a huge three points were Arsenal to win, the Gunners retreated into a 10-man shell in the second half. After having 33 percent possession in the first 45, Arsenal only managed 12 percent in the second, seemingly content to let City attack its blocks of four and five players in defense. The stats for the second half were somewhat ridiculous, and a higher detriment to the sport than a small delay of game: At around the 60th minute, the TV broadcast showed that City had accrued 109 touches in the Arsenal half. The visitors had only two in the hosts' half. City also shot 28 times in the second half—after only five in the first—while Arsenal managed just a single shot from Kai Havertz in the 97th minute. This was as one-way as one-way traffic gets, but Arsenal held on for almost the entirety of the second half.
There was nothing inevitable about City's eventual equalizer, save for the fact that the best team in England, and maybe in Europe, should probably score against anyone when up a man for so long. In the 98th minute, a Mateo Kovacic shot inside the box following a quick corner bounced perfectly into the path of John Stones, whose shot deflected ball into the back of the net to level the score at two apiece:
Entering Sunday's match, Arsenal would've probably been happy to come away with a point from what is its toughest fixture of the season. Hell, at halftime, down a man, a point probably seemed like the best case scenario. And yet, the Gunners also felt aggrieved by the red card and demoralized by the late equalizer. After the match, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta channeled José Mourinho, saying he preferred "not to comment," before commenting anyway: "It’s that obvious that it’s not necessary to comment on it. It’s the second time. I’m expecting 100 Premier League games to be, 10 against 11 or nine vs. 10 this season. Let’s see."
He's exaggerating, but it's hard to blame him after the Rice and Trossard incidents. It's true that Arsenal has been twice penalized under the new rules, and while one could blame the team for not drilling into its players to not kick the ball away after the whistle, it goes against the spirit of the law that it has happened twice already, just five matches into the season. (It's also true that Arsenal continues to benefit from the refs' hesitance to call fouls for the Gunners' highly effective but questionably legal tactic of swarming opposing goalies on corner kicks, so it goes both ways.) Does penalizing brief delays so harshly positively impact the viewing experience? I don't think so. I'd much rather wait an extra 10 second every now and then after a foul than see a team as dynamic as Arsenal forced to retreat into siege mode for 45 minutes.
If I knew there would be consistency throughout the season on how this is called, then maybe it would be less dispiriting to have it happen, but given that City winger Jérémy Doku similarly kicked the ball away in the second half and didn't receive a card for that infraction, I don't have high hopes on consistency being applied across months of the season, never mind in one specific match. (One could argue, as Doku did, that he was merely passing the ball backwards towards where the foul occurred; I could see an argument for that, but the ambiguity is the point here. Oliver has to make that call of his own discretion, and so it's almost impossible to get that consistency across the board.) Trossard might have been at fault for courting such a pointless second yellow, but the Premier League itself is to blame for ruining what should have been the best match of the season to date.
