Tennis star and Arsenal fan Andy Murray has weighed in on the decision to award Chelsea a penalty in Saturday’s Premier League match.

Chelsea were awarded a controversial penalty in their Premier League match against Arsenal on Saturday afternoon, with the referee initially waving away the claim before overturning his decision after a VAR review.

William Saliba had gone up to head the ball against Mykhaylo Mudryk, and Mudryk got there first in an attempt to direct the ball towards goal.

The ball skewed off Mudryk’s head and was heading wide of the target, but instead, it hit Saliba’s nearby arm. The referee decided it was a handball offence and awarded the spot kick.

The issue Arsenal fans have taken with the decision is that it doesn’t seem to fit the criteria for a handball offence. As per the IFAB guidelines, “not every touch of a player’s hand/arm with the ball is an offence”.

The guidelines add that it becomes an offence when the player touches the ball deliberately, or when they’ve “made their body unnaturally bigger”.

IFAB clarify: “A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation.”

The focus is therefore on whether Saliba’s raised arm was in an unnatural position, and Wimbledon hero Andy Murray points out that it wasn’t.

“If you watch a replay and just look at [Mudryk’s] arms when he jumps, they make exactly the same movement as Saliba,” Murray points out. “Both totally natural jumping positions.”

If you watch a replay and just look at mudryk arms when he jumps they make exactly the same movement as Saliba… both totally natural jumping positions 🤷‍♂️

— Andy Murray (@andy_murray) October 22, 2023

It’s a frustrating call, and seemingly the incorrect one by the laws of the game.

Much better known for his exploits on the tennis courts, Andy Murray revealed his allegiance to Arsenal long ago.

“I used to support Hibernian as my grandfather used to play for them,” Murray explained to Robert Pires in 2016.

“But when I started travelling a lot I couldn’t follow Scottish football on television so I started to watch Arsenal because of the way your team played.”

Murray confirmed in 2022 that he’s still a “huge Arsenal fan”, and he’s clearly keeping up with the games whenever he can.