Though Mikel Arteta has been charged for his comments on Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat to Newcastle United, the club will face no punishment.

The FA have charged Mikel Arteta with a breach of FA Rule E3.1, alleging his comments following Arsenal’s match against Newcastle United constituted misconduct.

The FA contend that Arteta’s comments were insulting towards officials and/or detrimental to the game and/or brought the game into disrepute.

The Evening Standard report that Arteta is likely to face a fine or a ban if he admits the charge, or if it is found to be proven by the independent regulatory commission.

But there’s some good news, as Arsenal won’t face punishment for their statement supporting Arteta’s comments.

The FA wrote to both Arsenal and Arteta after the game for their observations, but only Arteta is facing a fine or ban. The Standard write that no further action will be taken against the club.

As for Arteta’s comments, the charge is somewhat of a farce.

Though Howard Webb denied that the officials had made an error in the case of Newcastle United’s goal, he admitted that they had made mistakes in earlier incidents involving Kai Havertz and Bruno Guimaraes.

Arteta’s comments about an embarrassing or disgraceful performance by the officials would seem to be justified, if two of the three major decisions have been assessed to be wrong.

Even the goal decision hasn’t been proven correct. The PGMOL maintain only that it can’t be proven that the ball was out of play, nor that Anthony Gordon was offside.

They do not claim the decisions were correct, just that they couldn’t be proven incorrect.

So Arteta is well within his rights to maintain a belief that any of the three of the game’s big decisions were wrong, and the best the PGMOL can say is that one of them might have been right.