Everyone’s tomorrow.
Let’s start with the news that Arsenal are set to appeal against Max Dowman’s red card against Fleetwood on Tuesday night. I think that’s probably the right thing to do because if it had gone to a VAR investigation I think they would have really struggled to make a convincing case that it was violent behaviour.
Was it a small revenge? Yes. Did he reach the point of violence? Not for me. As stated in the rules of the game, it is determined as follows: Violent conduct is when a player uses, or attempts to use, excessive force or roughness against an opponent or against a teammate, team official, match official, spectator or any other person when not challenging for the ball, regardless of contact or not.
So I think Arsenal are right to appeal. They can cite other events to make their case. Cole Palmer may have just been booked for a more violent tackle on Mateus Fernandes in Chelsea’s last game against Sp*rs. Imagine if we used one of our own players, demonstrating that Bruno Guimaraes was allowed to hack Jorginho in the side of the head but wasn’t sent off because he didn’t use his arm as a weapon (or anything else).
Mikel Arteta is a man who “joked” a set of pictures to show other managers outside the technical area 36 times in ten minutes last week. If you think he can’t come up with a few more examples of players getting away with violent behavior, you haven’t been paying attention. Whether or not the rescinding of the red card will be enough is another matter, but we should at least see the three-match ban reduced. I think Red was very, very, very harsh, but it’s absurd and unfair to drop three games because of that, so I think we’re right to appeal.
Again, there’s talk of penalties for red cards and how ridiculous it is that every bit of violent behavior = a three game ban. Some moves are more violent than others, some really endanger the safety of the opponent, and yet they are all treated the same. It never made sense to me, and I really don’t understand why there isn’t a disciplinary panel that evaluates each submission and imposes a ban after the fact based on the severity of the incident.
Despite his frustration at the moment, I’m sure the manager’s view of Dowman’s behavior may have softened while watching replays. In the heat of the moment, I’m sure right now we have Christos Tzolis and Bukayo Saka out, while Noni Madueke has missed the midweek game to keep his ankle. So we are very light in wide areas at the moment and while the root cause of that may lie more at the door of the Sporting Director, he would like Dowman away at Anfield this weekend.
I still think Arteta’s reaction was poor, but football is a game of ideas. I’ve seen some suggestions that if Max is going to play with the big boys, he should be treated as an equal. Maybe that’s fair enough, but I’ve never seen Arteta react like this to a big player being sent off, and we’ve had a lot of red cards during his tenure. You could argue that the reason his age is different is because we all have to learn lessons when we’re young as opposed to when we’re older.
For me, even though we’re so talented and excited about what he can become, it’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that he’s 16 years old and that makes him different. So interesting that after Bukayo Saka’s injury against Bayern last week, there was countless talk about how much Arteta was to blame for how much he asked of the player since the jump. And in the same breath, many of the same people said, ‘Dowman’s time!’ he said. I find it a bit difficult to square that circle. Do you really care about the welfare of the young footballer or not?
I think Arteta was right to defend Max in general. He knows exposure at this age is something he and his staff have to consider for all sorts of reasons, and his playing time this season is limited. In this case, regardless of a few sharp words on the sidelines, he’s made it a bigger issue than it needs to be with Dowman in the spotlight, and I’ll be interested to see how he addresses it in his pre-Liverpool press conference tomorrow.
Well, I’ll leave it for the morning, but we’ll have an Arsecast for you in a bit, so stay tuned. And for a little extra, Tim’s column this week touches on Myles Lewis-Skelly, while there’s a new YouTube video exploring how key Lewis’ midfield rotation was against Everton and how that could play out for the rest of the season. You can watch (and subscribe to the channel) below.
Until later.