Arsenal have one player at direct risk of a yellow-card suspension going into the knockout stages of the Champions League, but many others are only two cards away.
Arsenal dealt with a couple of yellow-card suspensions during the League Phase of the Champions League, with Martin Zubimendi serving a ban against Slavia Praha and fellow midfielders Mikel Merino and Declan Rice banned against Kairat Almaty.
The one positive of those suspensions is that none of the three are one booking away from a ban anymore, but Christian Norgaard is.
UEFA rules ban players for one match after they receive their third yellow card of the tournament, and Norgaard is on two after bookings against Slavia Praha and Club Brugge. One more on Wednesday would see him missing the last-16 second leg.
No one else is a single booking away from a ban, but Merino, Zubimendi, Rice, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ben White, Riccardo Calafiori, Gabriel Magalhaes, and Noni Madueke are all two yellows away – should Arsenal continue to progress in the competition.
That’s because the next threshold for a ban is five yellows, with Merino, Zubimendi, and Rice on three. The other five players have one yellow card each, putting them two away from the first threshold of three.
The yellow cards will be wiped later in the tournament, but not until after the quarter-finals.
To be clear, a third/fifth/seventh yellow card in the second leg of the quarter-final stage would still result in a ban for the first leg of the semi. It’s only after that second leg that the yellows are wiped. Effectively, that means you can’t get a yellow-card ban for the semi-final second leg or the final.
The rest of Arsenal’s players are all currently pretty safe, as none of them have been booked a single time. But given it only takes three bookings to get your first ban, it doesn’t take long to find yourself at risk.