Chronicle Editor
ARSENAL manager, Mikel Arteta, saw his right back, receive a yellow card in the first half of the Champions League game against Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday and quickly came to a decision.
“We have played enough with 10 men in the recent period,” Arteta said with a smirk.
It is becoming abundantly clear: Arsenal has a discipline problem — and it might yet cost Arteta’s team a shot at the English Premier League title.
Arsenal has had three players sent off in the opening eight rounds of a league campaign that is seeing yellow cards being dished out at an unprecedented rate.
It continues something of a running theme under Arteta. Since he arrived as its manager in late 2019, Arsenal has collected 18 red cards in the Premier League — five more than the next team.
Tellingly for Arteta, the only games where Arsenal dropped points this season — the 1-1 home draw with Brighton, the 2-2 away draw at Manchester City and the 2-0 loss at Bournemouth on Saturday — came when the team had a player dismissed.
“We cannot continue to play with 10 men, especially at this level. You see how we struggled,” Arteta said this week. “We need to eradicate it, it’s clear. Why, the reason, how — it doesn’t matter. We have to focus on what has to happen.”
It particularly has to happen on Sunday, when Liverpool visits Emirates Stadium in the headline match of the league’s ninth round.
Liverpool is in first place, one point ahead of second-placed City and four clear of third-placed Arsenal. A win would put Liverpool seven points clear of Arsenal already — hardly an insurmountable deficit at this stage but one which would leave Arteta’s players with little wiggle room. Perhaps more importantly, it would likely leave Arsenal six points behind defending champion City, which is expected to sweep aside winless Southampton on Saturday.
Arsenal’s disciplinary issues come at the start of a season that has seen an average of 5.1 yellow cards awarded per game so far, according to league statistics supplier Opta.
That is far more than any previous Premier League, says Opta, which points out that last season’s 4.2 yellows per game was a new record — surpassing 3.7 per game in the 1998-99 season.
Liverpool’s manager, Arne Slot, looks out from the bench prior to the Champions League opening phase soccer match between RB Leipzig and Liverpool at the RB Arena in Leipzig, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024.(AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Two of Arsenal’s dismissals —
against Brighton and Leandro Trossard against City — saw the players in question each collect two yellow cards, the second for time-wasting by kicking the ball away. William Saliba was handed a straight red against Bournemouth for bringing down Evanilson near the halfway. —Online
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter