Dermot Gallagher has backed the referee’s decision not to send off Gabriel Magalhaes for a kick to Emi Martinez’s head, explaining that the defender got the ball.
Arsenal won 2-1 against Chelsea on Sunday, but some Chelsea fans were incensed by what they believed to be a red-card offence ignored by the referee.
Gabriel Magalhaes and Emi Martinez were among a throng of players on the floor attempting to play the ball, but the Arsenal defender’s kick ended up catching Martinez in the head with his follow-through.
It was a glancing blow at best, but some have argued it was deserving of a red card. Speaking to Sky Sports, former referee Dermot Gallagher and his co-hosts disagreed.
“They’re all on the floor. There’s a big tangle. He definitely goes to kick the ball and he gets the ball,” Gallagher pointed out.
“That’s why it pops out of Martinez’s hands. Then his foot goes up and catches Martinez in the head. I don’t think there’s any malice whatsoever in that.”
Tim Sherwood agreed, saying: “I think his foot slipped off the top of the ball and caught Martinez. I think Martinez makes far too much of it. That is the red flag.”
Making their views unanimous, Jay Bothroyd added: “I didn’t think that would be a red card at all.”
On the other controversial moments in the game, Gallagher felt Declan Rice did foul Morgan Rogers as the Chelsea attacker ran towards goal, but that it didn’t meet the threshold for a red-card VAR intervention.
“Rice clearly flicks out at him and brings him down, but the VAR can only say it’s a red card or nothing,” Gallagher explained. “Is it a red card? No. If the referee had seen it, he’d have given a foul.”
Finally, Gallagher believed that a potential foul on Rogers in the build-up to Arsenal’s winning goal was a debatable decision, but that it was too long before the goal for the game to be called back.
“He [the ref] didn’t think it was a foul. Is it a foul? Debatable,” Gallagher said. “The game has gone on and on, so has that impacted the move? Arsenal have won the ball in their own half. Once you start getting the VAR to go in there, you’ve no longer got a referee.”
Sherwood went one further, suggesting it wasn’t a foul to begin with.
“Morgan Rogers has just thrown himself down,” Sherwood insisted. “He [Konsa] just strengths him off. That is not a foul.”
Overall, it seems the Sky Sports trio had very little sympathy for Chelsea, with a yellow card for Rice likely to be the worst that could have happened. There was no cause for a red card, nor for Arsenal’s goals to be ruled out.
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