There was a smile on Mikel Arteta’s face as he delivered his post-match words after the win against Burnley in which Fabio Vieira was sent off. The first question of the press conference pertained to the decision to send off the Portuguese midfielder and the Arsenal manager chose to instead first address the performance before his remark about VAR and officials.
“I’m really happy with the result, especially with the performance after playing 72 hours ago, with the last three games. How we played against Newcastle, how we played against Sevilla, how we played today, how dominant we were against teams who are very hard to dominate the amount of situations that we dominated.
“I think we fully deserved to win the game. With the red card, yes, thank you for asking me, VAR was right, the referee was right, really good decision, really positive from Mikel to speak about that, good decision.”
Don’t worry Mikel, we’re going to discuss it. I for one have been empathetic to the Spaniard’s calls for greater scrutiny of the refereeing decisions that have plagued the league’s image and enjoyment over not just this season but many previously.
It seems as though officials have become something of an untouchable force that no one dared question, until Arteta did and the reaction was wildly disproportionate to what was actually said by the Arsenal boss. Was he slightly hyperbolic in the language used?
Perhaps. But in the context of what is at stake, as Arteta made sure to point out himself, it is understandable why he was so enraged and even more so when a week later we see decisions that completely contradicted the Gabriel Magalhaes vs Joelinton incident for the Newcastle United goal.
Mauricio Pochettino sends perfect gift to Mikel Arteta to
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