Text:
Panel says Newcastle goal vs. Arsenal was correct decision
"The Premier League’s Independent Key Match Incidents Panel has ruled the referee and the VAR were correct to award Newcastle United’s winning goal against Arsenal on Saturday – but the officials missed two red cards.
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta was furious that Anthony Gordon’s winning goal was allowed to stand by referee Stuart Attwell, with three separate VAR checks for the ball being out of play, a foul on Gabriel by Joelinton and offside against the goal scorer. On all three checks the VAR, Andy Madley, could not find conclusive evidence of an offence.
Arsenal as a club doubled down on their criticism of referee on Sunday, issuing a statement in support of Arteta.
The panel’s findings, seen by ESPN, said on a 4-1 vote that “although Joelinton does have his hands on Gabriel, there isn’t enough to award a foul as Gabriel had made an action to play the ball before any contact,” while also upholding the view there wasn’t enough proof to cancel the goal on the two factual offences.
However, the panel was unanimous that Kai Havertz should have been sent off for Arsenal in the 36th minute for his challenge on Sean Longstaff as it was “a very dangerous challenge and the type of tackle that needs to be eradicated” – a decision which would have altered the direction of the game.
Bruno Guimarães’ arm to the head of Arsenal’s Jorginho in the 45th minute was also a missed red card, but on a split 3-2 decision.
The panel has five members, made up of three former players and/or coaches, plus one representative each from the Premier League and PGMOL. It was set up at the start of last season to give an independent assessment of decision-making rather than relying on the views of PGMOL or the clubs themselves. The judgement is intended to provide an arm’s-length assessment of all major match incidents.
Elsewhere, the decision to award a mach-winning injury-time penalty to Sheffield United against Wolverhampton Wanderers was also unanimously viewed to be incorrect – the second time the VAR has incorrectly failed to overturn a spot kick against Gary O’Neil’s side in consecutive weeks.
All other refereeing decisions last weekend, including those in the Tottenham Hotspur vs. Chelsea game, were assessed as being correct."
I don’t know how to accept that isn’t a foul. Like if I have to recalibrate my understanding of the rules of football to include joelintons action as acceptable then nothing makes sense. You can use your arms to control another player as long as that player has already made a movement towards the ball? Like if gabriel wasn’t there then joelinton completely misses the ball by a solid foot, almost like he wasn’t playing the ball at all and was only concerned with pushing gabriel out of the way
Slight pushing in the box is part of the game. If a player falls down every time an opponent challenges for an aerial ball, you aren’t going to call a foul each time. Gabriel went down weakly from an awkward position he put himself in.
To me, Gabriel was intentionally dropping down to flick the ball backwards, not pushed down. The added pressure from Bruno made his header trickier (which is literally what challenging in the air is supposed to do) but it was his odd position, and not that Bruno’s pressure was more than allowable, that made him miss.
Then, because he saw it was going wrong, Gabriel collapsed so to give the ref a reason to deem it a foul. Like so many defenders do these days.
Meow.
“Independent”
“Gabriel had already made a movement to play the ball before any contact” what the fuck kind of reasoning is that? How does that make it not a foul?
???
I don’t agree with it fully but they’re saying Joelintons actions had no/ little impact on Gabriel as he had already went to make that header.
I’ve watched it on 0.25 speed and the only thing Gabriel had done by the time Joelinton made contact was brace/position himself as the ball was coming in. He still had more than enough time to adjust himself if unimpeded IMO. The decision makes no sense to me
It’s a phrasing they’ve never used before, to invent a way of not admitting wrongdoing.
He also played it with his arm.
Can someone explain to me how Saliba being hit on the arm in a natural jumping position from half a yard away on a scuffed Mudryk-header going a mile off target is a penalty, but Joelinton assisting the goal with his arm in a fouling motion from a 20 yard pass is a-okay.
Even beyond the handball , the foul is obvious and the offside is clear, there is no logic. Blatant cover-up.
i haven’t seen any angle showing whether it was offside, could you link a video/screencap?
And this is a pretty conservative set of lines from the guy who drew it. The line on Gordon is at his knee, rather than at his outstretched foot which isn’t visible from this angle, while the line for the ball is so far right, that if the ball was any further right it’d be visible - even though it obviously hit the left side of Joelinton.
If they’d drawn the lines at Gordon’s foot from a different angle, the line would go somewhere in the visible space right of Joelinton and behind Gabriel, which would mean that even if you can’t pinpoint the ball, you can see that it’s at least half a yard offside.
It’s much clearer than the the time they couldn’t find Cucurella’s foot because he was blocked by his own keeper, so they just gave up after 4 minutes and guessed that Martinelli was probably offside to overturn the goal.
A player with two arms on the back of another player, pushing them downwards, not looking at the ball but looking at the player they are fouling.
Any other circumstances it would be a foul.
That’s one way of interpreting it though. The other is that Gabriel is leaving forward to head it back over his head.
It’s a marginal call. You can’t just decide you know exactly what happened and then claim its an outrage! Gabriel himself didn’t even complain about it at the time.
You can only decide that two straight arms to the back of the head and neck impede Gabriel to move his head back. That’s a foul in itself. Then you can also notice that they weren’t straight at the beginning of the action and that all muscles on Gabriel’s legs get more tense throughout because he is trying to resist the push.
We’re not even mentioning that the first point of contact with the ball was that arm, clearly not in a natural position.
Handballs don’t get called if the person who handled it doesn’t score when attacking
Bracing himself for when Gabriel flings his head back.
Bruno should have been sent off but that’s not a foul.
Per the FA if a player impedes another player, pushes or holds them it’s a direct free kick. Joelinton pushes Gabriel down and impedes his ability to play the ball.
Also if
HANDLING THE BALL
For the purposes of determining handball offences, the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit. Not every touch of a player’s hand/arm with the ball is an offence.
It is an offence if a player:
deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, for example moving the hand/arm towards the ball touches the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger. A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation. By having their hand/arm in such a position, the player takes a risk of their hand/arm being hit by the ball and being penalised.
Joelinton has made himself unnaturally bigger by sticking his arms out to push Gabriel. So it’s both a foul and a handball
