Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has expressed his displeasure about refereeing decisions after his side failed to secure a favorable result in Sunday's clash with Manchester United. The Spanish coach has questioned some of the calls made by the match officials after overseeing the end to the Gunner's perfect start to the season.
Marcus Rashford was the star of the show at Old Trafford, grabbing his first United brace since December 2020, while Antony delivered the best first impression by finding the scoresheet in his debut. In between, Bukayo Saka was able to register a consolation goal for Arsenal but could only do so much to stop the Red Devils from recording their fourth successive victory in the Premier League.
Despite the result, Arsenal maintained their status as the league-leaders and, after five matches, are a point ahead of defending champions Manchester City. However, manager Mikel Arteta could not hide his dissatisfaction with the manner in which the game was handled by the match officials.
Earlier in the first half, the Gunners had a potential opener by Gabriel Martinelli being wiped off the scoreboard after VAR ruled that Martin Odegaard had fouled Christian Eriksen in the build-up to the goal. Speaking to reporters about the officiating after the game, Arteta opined that they should have taken the lead and blamed the incident on inconsistency of the referees.
"It is a lack of consistency," the Arsenal boss said.
"One is soft and last week they made a foul on Aaron (Ramsdale) but it is soft, it is not a foul. There is a foul on Bukayo (Saka), it is soft but not a penalty.
"Today it is a foul. The threshold in the first actions, you could see there is no yellow card because they want to keep a threshold in a big game.
"It is really difficult to understand."
Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard also sided with his manager regarding the disallowed goal. Quizzed about the incident after the match, he said: "In my opinion it is never a foul. A soft challenge and for VAR to come in it has to be clear and obvious.
"Very, very soft. You can make it look worse on camera. Never a foul, the referee said play on. I barely touched him, they keep saying this is the Premier League and want it to be physical.
"I don't understand how he can go back on it."
