Referee Simon Hooper and his VAR team may have made a big mistake late in the latest Arsenal game when they missed a possible foul on Gabriel Jesus.
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The Gunners suffered another setback in their pursuit of Premier League glory last night, as they were held to a third conservative draw.
Indeed, after drawing 2-2 with Liverpool and then doing the same against West Ham United, Arsenal repeated the trick against Southampton.
Instead of going two goals up, they fell two goals behind and had to rally for a 3-3 tie thanks to late goals from Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka.
Indeed, the club captain scored in the 88th minute, only for the Saints to concede two minutes later. The ball then fell to Jesus inside the penalty box with only seconds remaining on the clock.
As seen in the video shared on Twitter, the Brazilian takes a touch and is about to shoot when he is clumsily bundled over by an opposing player.
The replay shows that the ball was not clearly won, and Jesus was knocked to the ground before he could shoot. It’s the kind of decision that, if Hooper had pointed to the spot, VAR would not have overturned.
However, the Gunners were unsuccessful because the referee refused to award a penalty and those in charge of the technology did not believe it was a serious enough error to warrant intervention.
Southampton cleared their lines and held on for a point. This could be costly for Arsenal now, as they haven’t been able to extend their league lead as much as they would have liked.
Indeed, despite having played two more games, they will travel to the Etihad to face Manchester City, where they will be just five points ahead of Pep Guardiola and co.
With that in mind, the situation is straightforward. Mikel Arteta and his team will almost certainly require an away win on Wednesday night if they are to achieve the unthinkable and win the Premier League at the end of May.
They’ll no doubt be hoping for better luck with the officials in Manchester, but they’ll also need a much better performance from the entire team.
Arsenal has been a victim of bad decisions from English referees. English Premiership has the most bad referees with poor officiating in the whole world. They are too bias in on the pitch especially against Arsenal. They always ignore alot of foul play on Arsenal players. So pathetic to see how they don’t give enough protection to Arsenal players despite been on top of the league table. Arsenal players deserved more from referees than what they get