Arsenal will make referee complaint over ‘unacceptable’ decision in Sunderland victory

Arsenal will make a complaint to Pro Ref over their decision to award a penalty to Sunderland in the Gunners’ 2-0 win in the Premier League.

The Gunners beat the Black Cats at the Stadium of Light on Saturday evening with a Bruno Guimaraes rocket getting the scoring going on 58 minutes.

Bukayo Saka scored a late penalty for Arsenal in the eighth minute of added time at the end of the second half to take the game away from Sunderland.

However, the Black Cats could have gone ahead earlier in the fixture with a wonderful chance from the penalty spot after Dan Ballard was fouled in the area.

Ezri Konsa was deemed to have hauled Ballard to the ground inside the penalty area but replays seemed to show the Sunderland centre-back had pulled Konsa on top of him.

Enzo Le Fe missed the resulting spot-kick but reacting to the decision, Arteta was livid, he said: “How can this be a penalty? I don’t know. I cannot find an explanation, honestly. That’s why I’m going to try to find an explanation now. I want to talk about the game. How good we were, how good Sunderland was, and the level of the league, and how beautiful this is. We should never be talking about this.”

The Daily Telegraph have revealed that Arsenal ‘will contact Pro Ref’ over the penalty decision to make a formal complaint over the incident, which didn’t cost the Gunners.

It was a bad weekend for referees’ chief Howard Webb with Pro Ref issuing a statement to admit that Erling Haaland’s winner in the Manchester Derby shouldn’t have stood after VAR reversed the on-field decision of offside.

Giving his reaction to Haaland’s winner and VAR in general, a fuming Wayne Rooney said on Match of the Day: “I’m just so sick of this VAR. I think it’s horrendous. It’s taken all the emotion out the game, the energy that the game is played with.

“To not see that and recognise that Enzo Fernandez is in an offside position is… anyone who’s played the game at any level understands that and knows that he’s in an offside position.

“To get it so wrong is just baffling.”

Schmeichel: ‘I wish that we could scrap VAR’

Another Man Utd legend, Peter Schmeichel, also wants to see the back of VAR with the technology sucking the life out of football.

Schmeichel commented on Viaplay: “I wish that we could scrap VAR.

“We’ve got into a system now where VAR and the referees are the most important people in football. It sucks all the energy out of it. As soon as there is a goal, you’re not allowed to celebrate.

“We saw, after five minutes, the players and the fans could celebrate – but it’s not the same. The ball goes in the back of the net, it’s a goal, but then the linesman puts his flag up for offside.

“I wish, and I’m longing for these days, we could scrap VAR because it’s such an annoyance and it’s interfering with football. And it hasn’t made it better.”