Mikel Arteta was left baffled after Arsenal were denied a penalty against Hull City in a bizarre situation at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday.
The Gunners came away 1-0 winners regardless of that decision after Martin Ødegaard broke the deadlock against a stubborn defence in the second half.
Goalkeeper Konstantinos Tzolakis could only parry Noni Madueke’s strike into the path of Ødegaard, who slotted the ball home in the 72nd minute.
The victory moves Arsenal six points clear at the top of the Premier League following Manchester City’s defeat to Nottingham Forest, though Arteta would like to see his side be more clinical.
“We had some big moments that we should have scored and we didn’t hit the target, get the final pass, we are one-on-one with the keeper and don’t take the chance,” he told Sky Sports.
“So many situations where you don’t do that, you need to rely on generating so much volume and at some point, hoping that you’re going to get them down and that’s the way we won the game.”
Arsenal looked toothless in attack for much of the game against a well organised Hull defence that gave the hosts no easy routes to goal.
“It’s something that has happened a lot and in some of the games, we’ve been 1-0 down very early and we still managed to do that,” Arteta said.
“To get a result and the kind of performance we gave today is very important. We need to praise our players for the way they go about every game and what we’ve done since the first international break up to now with the games that we had and the amount of points we have.”
Arteta ‘confused’ about Arsenal penalty decision against Hull
Arsenal should have had a penalty five minutes before the halftime break when Nobel Mendy pulled on Kai Havertz’ shirt in the box. Following a VAR review, referee Farai Hallam reviewed the incident on the pitchside monitor before deciding that Havertz was offside.
It’s unclear why Hallam was asked to conduct an on-field review if the offside had already been identified by VAR in the first place. But more importantly, a player who is in an offside position only becomes active when they commit an offside offence.
Havertz must be “attempting to play the ball, or challenging an opponent for the ball”, according to the rules. Since he was not, the shirt pull by Nobel Mendy takes precedence and there Arsenal should have had a spot kick.
“I was confused because when the referee went to the monitor, it was because it was a clear penalty but they made a different decision based on the offside. We haven’t got any clarity yet about the situation,” said Arteta.
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