I must say that although I am glad that Arsenal got the benefit of the controversial decision of a referee for a change, I feel sorry for AFC Bournemouth and their manager Eddie Howe. Really it should have been one of our previous two opponents Chelsea or Southampton that was on the wrong end of a call as they have both benefited from the officials at our expense this season.
Howe was clearly baffled after the game as to why Kevin Friend, who had a perfect and close up view of the incident between Mathieu Flamini and Dan Gosling, produced a yellow card for the Arsenal player for a two footed tackle. Both TV pundits Thierry Henry and Graeme Souness were on the side of the Bournemouth boss as well, even though they accepted that Flamini had not gone to injure his opponent and Gosling had time enough to avoid it.
Former Premier League ref Graham Poll told the Daily Mail that it was a definite red card and he also said, probably correctly, that Arsene Wenger would have been furious if it had been the other way around.
And even though I think there is a case to argue that Flamini clearly got the ball and not the player, we could not really have argued with a sending off. However, that is just one back for a number of decisions that have gone against the Gunners this season and damaging ones at that.
I think me might just have used up our luck, though, and another tackle like that against Leicester will see us go down to 10 men. With that in mind, should Wenger think long and hard about starting Flamini?