Piers Morgan has placed the blame on VAR for Arsenal’s loss to Newcastle United this evening, while also acknowledging that Arsenal did not perform well in the game.
Mikel Arteta’s team was expected to secure a victory against the Magpies, or at the very least, come away with a point. However, that did not happen, as Newcastle proved too resilient for Arsenal to break down.
The match remained very close, with both teams failing to register a shot on target until the controversial goal. The goal was the result of a contentious sequence of events.
Despite David Raya once again struggling to control a cross, it seemed that the ball had crossed the line in the lead-up to the goal. Unfortunately, a protracted VAR review did not confirm it, and there also appeared to be a foul in the build-up that went unnoticed.
Understandably, Arsenal fans are frustrated with VAR and Morgan tweeted:
“VAR was MoM for Newcastle but we deserved to lose. Arsenal were dreadful.
“Only Rice, again, deserves any praise.
“So long as we have no proper striker, and Arteta persists in this ridiculous Havertz farce, we won’t win the League.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
This loss was very frustrating and it is one of those days that VAR went against us. However, when will Raya know the right time and place to be to pick out a cross?
We didn’t deserve to lose sorry…..Newcastle didn’t have a kik all game….
I agree we didn’t deserve to lose and certain decisions that were made by the officials wrecked the match
What it doesn’t do, however, is to take away the fact that without a visionary player like Odegaard or a consistent goal scorer we struggled. There were not many accurate shots on goal and Newcastle defended well.
I saw in my mind’s eye a decent performance from us that just didn’t have that killer instinct or flair to make it count.
Havertz who has courted so much controversy certainly put himself out there with a couple of wild tackles/fouls and was lucky to not get sent off. BG should have been imo as it was sneaky violent conduct which he got away with and his later yellow would have been a red.
I’m with Reggie on the Raya mis reading of his role for the goal. PLAY TO THE WHISTLE.
We still have a few stop gap signings unfortunately. Cedric was a loan deal made permanent by the disgraced Sanhelli At least Mari moved on. Jorghino also falls into the stop gap category but is still with us. I just don’t see City having stop gap signings as any one of their number can fit seamlessly into the first 11
Jorginho hasn’t been here a year, so I wouldn’t expect him to have been sold so quickly. It does happen of course, but typically you expect to keep a new player for at least a year, even if they are a stop gap, to give them a proper chance to bed in and cement themselves.
I do agree with your characterisation of him as a stop gap, though, and your overall point about the number of stop gap signings we’ve made – we have made a lot of them, when it should always be a last resort