Alan Smith was left stunned during Sky Sports’ coverage of Arsenal’s defeat to Burnley on Sunday evening after VAR opted against sending-off Mohamed Elneny.
With Arsenal already down to 10 men, Elneny shoved Burnley defender James Tarkowski in the face with both hands, but only received a yellow card for the incident – the away side went onto score moments later and win the game.
That didn’t stop former England defender Rio Ferdinand from poking fun on Twitter at Arsenal sitting in the bottom half of the Premier League table and suffering their fourth home defeat of the campaign.
Nonetheless, this is what Smith had to say about the Elneny incident last night as it unfolded.
“Tarkowski went down first and then Elneny followed,” said Smith. “Oh my word, is that another arm in the face? What’s he doing? What is Elneny doing? Just mark your man. He’s not even facing the ball. He has got to be side on there. It’s ridiculous.
“He’s got to go, hasn’t he? If Xhaka gets a straight red for his offence. That’s two arms in the face, not one.
On it then being a yellow: “Wow. Well, you just never know, do you?”
Everything that is going wrong for Mikel Arteta at Arsenal is going wrong and he clearly won’t last long given the club’s current situation.
From being praised for being the brains behind Manchester City’s recent success under Pep Guardiola, it has been a pretty disastrous first job for Arteta despite the fact that he lifted the FA Cup in the summer.
More than likely, Arteta will get the chop unless the Arsenal board stick with him through this very difficult period which could potentially suffocate the club more because of how many games are due to be played this month.
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