The FA fine is fine, but …

Morning all.

Arsenal’s transfer plans for the summer are in tatters after we were slapped with a massive fine by The FA for ‘failing to control our players’ after Myles Lewis-Skelly was wrongly sent off against Wolves.

£65,000. Down the drain. Kai Havertz will never score again.

The club insisted the players just wanted to talk to Michael Oliver, and that they ‘did not behave in a way which was offensive, violent, threatening, abusive, indecent, insulting or provocative.’

The FA responded by saying, ‘Competing at the top end of the Premier League table does not mitigate the behaviour. Players representing a high-profile club, competing at the top of the Premier League, in a fixture screened live across the world bear a responsibility to conduct themselves properly.’

Screened around the world, eh? High-profile, eh? This far down the line, it’s water under the bridge, but if players are going to be held up as responsible for not tarnishing the ‘product’ that is the Premier League, do the people tasked with officiating the game not have a similar responsibility? Michael Oliver made a bad decision, and look, that can happen in the heat of the moment. But the guy on VAR? No excuses.

In the appeal, which saw the red card rescinded, the independent panel said, ‘The challenge was certainly ‘Foul Play’ but it obviously could not, to the mind of the Commission, be categorised as having been ‘Serious Foul Play’.

But look, there are rules in place about crowding refs, and I seem to remember some edict about how only a captain is now allowed talk to the referee. One which doesn’t seem to be enforced, which is probably a good thing because open communication between officials and players – once it’s respectful – is positive, in my opinion. The headmaster approach just won’t work in football, even if it does in other sports.

Anyway, if we broke those rules, we can expect to get punished, but if there’s frustration among Arsenal fans it might be about how consistently those rules are applied across the Premier League. At this point though, I think we just pay the fine, and get on with it. This is an organisation, by the way, that referred to our lad as ‘Lewis Myles-Skelly’ in their document, so having got it wrong on the pitch that day against Wolves; and in the VAR booth; and by doubling-down on the decision afterwards when they could have rescinded it like they did with Bruno Fernandes earlier in the season; and by calling in favours from lickspittle hacks to try and cast an 18 year old as the actual ‘villain’ in this situation; they continued to get it wrong all the way to the end.

How do you even contend with that kind of commitment? I don’t know when the next edition of the Howard and Mickey Show is on Sky, but I doubt we’ll hear the audio from that incident. I’d like to, actually, just to try and understand the thinking, it’s just more likely Howard Webb will pick something that shows ‘Hey we at PGMOL are committed to getting things right and here’s an example of something we got a little bit wrong but changed our minds on to demonstrate how open we are to correcting our mistakes’, and Michael Owen will stand there nodding, the empty space in his head filled with tiny little helicopters doing tours of Dubai, and mini-Mickeys dreaming of scoring against 13 year old goalkeepers again.

Sticking with The FA, they released a statement yesterday saying that semi-automated offside technology would be used in the FA Cup this season, and subsequently in the Premier League:

The new technology will be introduced in the Emirates FA Cup fifth round, in collaboration with the Premier League and the Professional Game Match Officials Limited [PGMOL], following an extensive testing period that has taken place during the 2024-25 season. Following successful live operation in the Emirates FA Cup, the Premier League will look to implement the system later this season.

This was originally meant to be introduced much earlier in the season, but in typical fashion they have decided to use different technology from the one in use by UEFA in the Champions League for example, so it was delayed. Maybe it will make no difference at all, but I can’t be the only one uneasy by the implementation of this with only 13 games of the season remaining.

The FA say, “The operation of Semi-Automated Offside Technology does not change the accuracy of the decision making but enhances the speed and efficiency of the process”, but you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical. They can’t even get Myles Lewis-Skelly’s name right, so we’re supposed to just take this at face value?

Surely, for what remains of the ‘sporting integrity’ of the Premier League, we should stick with the same rules/technology all the way through a campaign. I know we all have our issues with how long it can take for VAR to come to a decision about a tight offside, but it is – at least – the same for everyone, and consistent since August. Changing now, or even in a few weeks time with even fewer game remaining, doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.

Which is probably why they’ll do it anyway.

Ok, let’s leave it there. There’s an Arsecast Extra below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, and over on Patreon we round up all the Premier League action in The 30.

Have a good one.

The post The FA fine is fine, but … appeared first on Arseblog … an Arsenal blog.