Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal players endured yet another miserable day across London at Stamford Bridge as the referee Mike Dean saw fit to send off two of our players while somehow managing to miss the repeated and sustained sending off offences of the Chelsea striker Diego Costa.
I am not defending the reaction of Gabriel but his petulant flick of a foot was nothing compared to Costa´s treatment of him, Laurent Koscielny and then later on Bellerin I think. Hopefully the Premier League will look at the evidence and ban the dirty cheating swine retrospectively because if we lose our players and Chelsea get to play Costa it will just be rubbing salt into the wounds.
It won´t help Arsenal though and we do have a big problem because Cazorla and Gabriel will miss the next EPL game, which is away to in form Leicester City. And just to make things worse, our holding midfielder Francis Coquelin picked up a knee injury that the manager suggested would keep him out as well. “It is a little knee injury, ” said Wenger. “I don’t know how long it will be – certainly not for midweek. I don’t know yet how long.”
So as well as the cost to Arsenal of losing today, with Chelsea reaping all the rewards of the officials´ ineptitude, Arsenal have three big problems to solve in the next game. Could today´s game have gone any worse?