Mikel Arteta refused to blame the referees for his side’s dropped points against Southampton on Sunday, despite a truly awful officiating display.

Arsenal's Spanish manager Mikel Arteta gestures on the touchline during the English FA Cup third round football match between Nottingham Forest and Arsenal at The City Ground in Nottingham, central England, on January 9, 2022. (Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images)
Arsenal’s Spanish manager Mikel Arteta gestures on the touchline during the English FA Cup third-round football match between Nottingham Forest and Arsenal at The City Ground in Nottingham, central England, on January 9, 2022. (Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images)

Whenever a team drops points, they’re inevitably going to look for excuses, and ‘poor refereeing’ is a classic. It’s one of few things out of the control of the players, and it’s undoubtedly true that one or two big decisions can change games.

But the refereeing performance on Sunday wasn’t just about one or two incidents. It was a consistent pattern throughout the match letting Southampton get away with almost whatever they liked, in the big moments and the small ones alike.

Many Arsenal fans have focused on a couple of penalty claims, but it was all the little fouls not given that disrupted the performance so badly.

Despite all that, Mikel Arteta wouldn’t blame the referees when speaking in his post-match press conference.

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“No complaints,” Arteta said. “This is football. We were really good in the first half and controlled totally the game, we created loads of big chances that we didn’t put away.

“In the Premier League, unfortunately, if you don’t do that when you are top of the game you can have some difficulties.

“In the second half we put ourselves in problems with the amount of giveaways that we had, especially with ball possession, and that didn’t allow us to control the game the way we wanted.

“I don’t know (about the penalty shouts). I don’t want to comment on that. I want to see the images before I do that.”

SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 23: Bukayo Saka and Granit Xhaka of Arsenal gather the players during the Premier League match between Southampton FC and Arsenal FC at Friends Provident St. Mary's Stadium on October 23, 2022 in Southampton, England. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND: Bukayo Saka and Granit Xhaka of Arsenal gather the players during the Premier League match between Southampton FC and Arsenal FC at Friends Provident St. Mary’s Stadium on October 23, 2022. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

It’s probably smart for Arteta not to talk about the officiating, given the punishments they hand out for that kind of thing nowadays. But there were so many moments he could have discussed.

There were the elbows flying around from Lyanco, the clear penalty shout as Caleta-Car wrapped his arms around Gabriel Jesus, the booking Saka got for being fouled, and the hand Lyanco put around Nketiah’s neck which only resulted in a yellow.

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Perhaps most embarrassingly of all for Robert Jones, a Premier League referee, was when he put his arm up to play advantage after a foul on Bukayo Saka, then let play go on when Saka lost the ball – while he still had his arm up for the advantage.

So an advantage was being played for Arsenal, yet Southampton had the ball. One of the more bizarre moments you’ll ever see from an official.

Arsenal will have to take their frustration and funnel it into motivation to get back to winning ways this week.

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