🎯 The main takeaway: It is never easy with Arsenal
I know my mantra is that there are no easy games in the Premier League but if there was going to be an easy game I would have thought maybe this would have been it.
My pre-match odds heavily favored Arsenal here and had expectations that they could potentially put up a big scoreline against Hull.
That is most certainly not what we got, as Arsenal had to grind out their 5th 1-0 win of the season.
In the end the xG scoreline looks decent with Arsenal racking up 1.2 expected here but really took a while to get going and Arsenal had trouble generating open looks against Hull’s back five.
This was a real grind and Arsenal had trouble generating open looks. There were a few plays where Arsenal got in but couldn’t pull the trigger (Kai Havertz) or it was just a few inches away (Gabriel) but overall it was slim pickings. I will give a lot of credit to Hull, because they did a good job of staying in their shape and also being able to wriggle out of pressure before it could fully build up into an overwhelming force.
Every time it seemed like Arsenal were starting to build up and pen them in they did a good job of getting the ball up the pitch.
They actually created a bit of threat from their set plays as well, generating 4 corner kicks and several attacking free kick opportunities.
In the end Arsenal were able to just enough but it wasn’t easy and it was another grind it out performance.
The non-penalty call
I don’t love digging too deep into referee decisions or discussion but I think that there was a clear error of the laws applied here. In this situation, Arsenal are trying to play the ball into Kai Havertz but Nobel Mendy grabs his shirt and stops him from being able to continue his run.
He is fouled but he is in an offside position and that is what is ultimately called by the referee as confirmed by the PL here.
The problem is that I believe that this was a misapplication of the offside law. There is a specific clause that is directly relevant to this situation in law 11.2.
Being in an offside position is not against the rules and we see this quite often where a player will be offside but there is no call because they weren’t active. To become active he would have touched the ball, made a clear attempt to play the ball, or prevented an opponent from playing the ball. Given that the pass ended up deflected and not near where he was, there is no real way to say that he had ever become active to be judged as being offside.
It is a bit counter intuitive but being in an offside position is not against the rules and that does not allow for the defenders to have a free pass to commit a foul. Arsenal have been on the opposite side of this type of call in the past and it sucks, but that is the rule.
Thankfully this isn’t something that ended up having a potentially decisive impact on the match and it can end more like a footnote but that is a real blunder by the officials to make a mistake of getting the actual laws wrong and not just a judgement type call where it is subjective.
📈 The positives:
Noni Madueke continues to impress.
