Mikel Arteta has felt the walls closing in on the domestic front in recent weeks. And it was surely a part of the reason why the Arsenal manager went on the offensive about refereeing decisions after his team’s Premier League win over Newcastle on Saturday.
Arteta insisted that the Newcastle goalkeeper, Nick Pope, ought to have been sent off rather than booked for a foul on Viktor Gyökeres, which he argued represented the denial of a goalscoring opportunity. And, while he was at it, Arteta went back to the previous league game – the 2-1 defeat at Manchester City – and made a similar point: he believed the City defender Abdukodir Khusanov should have been dismissed for a last-man foul on Kai Havertz.
Is Arteta feeling the pressure? Absolutely, because it is white-hot with Arsenal so close to a first league title since 2004. Also, there is just the way that Arteta lives each match – total immersion, off-the-scale intensity. When he feels wronged or if things do not work out, he can struggle to keep a lid on it.
There was an ulterior motive. By highlighting perceived injustice, Arteta was seeking to gain an edge. When the next borderline decision came, maybe Arsenal might find themselves on the right side of it. Perhaps it will be the case when they play Fulham at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday. But it most assuredly was not that way in Wednesday’s Champions League semi-final first leg at Atlético Madrid.
As Arsenal headed home to London on Thursday morning, the overriding emotions were frustration and bewilderment. It still made no sense. How did the referee, Danny Makkelie, reverse his 78th-minute decision to give the Gunners a penalty for a David Hancko foul on Eberechi Eze?
With the score at 1-1, it looked a soft one in the heat of the moment, Eze getting to a pass from Bukayo Saka just before Hancko, kicking the ball away but, crucially, feeling a tread from his opponent on his right foot and going down. The contact was there and so when Makkelie gave the penalty, it was always going to be a tough one for him to go back on when he was advised by the video assistant referee to check the replays.
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Rice claims referee bowed to fan pressure
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Declan Rice has claimed Arsenal should have been awarded a “clear” penalty at Atlético Madrid and that the referee was “provoked” to change his mind by hostile home fans.
Danny Makkelie overturned his decision to award Arsenal a late spot-kick after David Hancko made contact with Eberechi Eze. Against the backdrop of 70,000 whistling Atlético fans, the Dutch referee watched the incident 13 times before reversing his on-pitch verdict.
“It’s a clear penalty,” Rice told Stan Sport. “And I don’t know how that’s not been given. I think the fans provoked the decision and changed the ref’s mind. Uefa is totally different [to the Premier League]. In both boxes, you have to be so careful because they give absolutely everything.”
Two VAR interventions worked against Arsenal, with Ben White adjudged to have handled Marcos Llorente’s volley to concede the penalty from which Julián Alvarez equalised.
Rice said: “At first glance I thought if that’s in the Premier League it doesn’t get given because it’s so low to the ground. The ball’s not going on target.” PA Media
The only way Makkelie could do so would be to say that the contact was insufficient to send Eze tumbling over. Or, to put it another way, the Arsenal player had dived. Well, that is what happened. According to Uefa and its VAR technical explanation bulletin, the “Atleti player, No 17 [Hancko], did not commit a foul on the opponent”.
After Makkelie’s revised decision, the Atlético manager Diego Simeone waved an imaginary card in the air, presumably wanting a yellow for Eze, and the episode has left a bitter taste for Arteta. Most impartial onlookers felt that Pope’s offence for Newcastle did not merit a red card and that Khusanov defended his position fairly against Havertz. But if those decisions were enough to stir the paranoia in Arteta, then what about this one? Because it was illogical. And as for the kicker in terms of Eze’s integrity …
It feels as if Arteta is in siege mentality mode, ripe to be nibbled at by his rivals. Some of Simeone’s comments after the first leg – which finished 1-1 – appeared to be loaded. “We saw a bit the tiredness that Arsenal have accumulated from so many games, from so much responsibility, from trying to win the Premier League, where they are top,” he said. “They have to win the Champions League; they have won 10 games [in the competition], had no defeats, so all that accumulates …”
Simeone was critical of Makkelie’s decision to award the first penalty of the game for a foul by Hancko on Gyökeres. The Arsenal striker converted for 1-0. Atlético were then themselves given a penalty, scored by Julián Alvarez, after the VAR advised that Marcos Llorente’s shot had hit Ben White’s outstretched hand.
“The first penalty, in my humble opinion, there is a contact on the back, he [Gyökeres] waits for the contact, throws himself …” Simeone said. “In the semi-final of the Champions League, it needs to be a penalty. Thanks to VAR there was a handball that wasn’t [given] and thanks to VAR, there’s a penalty not given. Sometimes VAR takes from you, sometimes it gives to you.”
What Arteta must do as he looks to Tuesday’s second leg is use the feeling that Arsenal are being persecuted as fuel. He also needs to devise a gameplan that can better cut through Atlético’s lines. In the final analysis from Wednesday, the biggest positive for visitors came in how they took control of the ball and the tempo after a difficult opening 10 minutes.
They were the better team from that point to half-time. But what did they create of clear-cut note? There were a couple of eye-catching surges from Noni Madueke and a chance for Martin Ødegaard on the counterattack. Plus the Gyökeres penalty. There was little from them in the second half apart from the Eze penalty that wasn’t. Atlético turned the tide, pressing more effectively, and might have scored more than once. Ademola Lookman missed two big chances and Antoine Griezmann hit the crossbar and might have done better with two other openings.
“We wanted the win,” the Atlético goalkeeper, Jan Oblak, said. “We didn’t get it but that doesn’t change the fact that we played well. Arsenal didn’t have space, they hardly created chances and we did have them. We leave with a good feeling. What matters is that we feel positive looking ahead.”
Arteta will hope to have Eze and Saka available from the start for the return and maybe Havertz back from injury. Those players would make a difference. Atlético’s Alvarez, meanwhile, must shrug off the problem that forced him to go off in the 77th minute. The last word for now went to Llorente and it was difficult to disagree with him. “It is two teams with very clear ideas,” he said. “It will be another war.”
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