The Premier League 2022 matches started with a bang when Arsenal took on Manchester City at the Emirates for an all round controversial match.
Complete dominance from Arsenal in the first half!
Arsenal where without their manager Mikel Arteta who recently got the Covid-19 missed the match from the sidelines, his assistant took over the sidelines Arteta running instructions from his home.
And to everyone’s to surprise, Arsenal started the match pretty strong holding position and making good progress forward while Manchester City struggled to create any attacking threat.
Arsenal completely dominated Manchester City in the first half where City fail to register a single shot on target, and Arsenal scored the first goal through back after an amazing string of passes for a counter attack where Tierney’s cross found Saka who slotted it home first time.
Controversies all round with the referee and a disaster of 2nd half
But things would change on quickly for Arsenal as the match took a complete opposite turn with every single decision going against Arsenal from the referee Stuart Atwell.
Arsenal were denied a penalty or even a VAR check when Martin Odegard was found in the Manchester City Box but the referee did not even bother to look at the VAR screen and just carried on the Play.
And things would get even worse in the second half after Arsenal were punished when Manchester City got a penalty after Bernardo Silva went down easily in the Arsenal box with the Granit Xhaka opposite him.
Things would go from bad towards for Arsenal after the referee gave a second yellow card to Arsenal’s centre-back Gabriel for or a lightest of fouls, leaving Arsenal with 10 players for the majority of the second half.
Referee blocked the run to avoid a goal
Arsenal fans were seen fuming as the referee would again be in the limelight, after he was seen blocking Gabriel Martinelli’s run and just 2 minutes later Manchester City equalised against Arsenal.
Martinelli had an open chance for the goal where he was making a run for the ball but the referee was in the way of the Brazilian striker and that resulted in Martinelli being off balance and missing his shot on the target potentially giving Arsenal the lead.
A tale of 10 men Arsenal vs 12 men Manchester City
Decision would go against Arsenal at every single location after the referee gave out five yellow cards against Arsenal and zero against Manchester City up until the 70th minute where Rodri was supposed get his first yellow but the referee ignored it and instead gave the yellow to saka for telling the ref that rodri deserves the booking for his tackle.
Manchester City finally managed to score the winning goal with Rodri in the 93rd minute to take all three points from the Emirates but again the referee was in the limelight for not booking him after the player was seen taking off his shirt for the celebration.
Rodri wasnt given a yellow card and the second yellow card for his celebration would have meant that he would have gotten a red card and have been taken off the pitch but the referee seemed to pay no attention to that and restarted the game promptly.
“Robbed” was seen trending on social medias as there were 2,600 tweets made in the span of 15 minutes after the match happened.
Friends from every single club in the Premier League were seen criticizing the officials for their clear bias Arsenal saying how Arsenal played 10 men versus 12 men and how they were at a disadvantage because of the referee.
Arsenal set forth at the table currently with West Ham, Manchester United, and Tottenham, all gunning for that position while Manchester City sits at the top after being unbeaten in their 11 previous Premier League games.