Manchester City ran out a dramatic and incident-filled 2-2 draw against Arsenal in the previous Premier League outing.
Erling Haaland put his side 1-0 up in the first 10 minutes at the Etihad Stadium with his 100th goal for City.
Before the halftime whistle blew, the Gunners got themselves 2-1 up but saw Leandro Trossard get sent off after he picked up a second yellow card for kicking the ball away and delaying a restart after fouling Bernardo Silva.
Then in the dying seconds of the match, John Stones bagged a crucial equaliser for Pep Guardiola’s team to stop them from being given their first defeat of the season.
Even though several days have passed since this dramatic game, one pundit has shared his frustration about one particular incident that took place, or more accurately, didn’t take place, during the match.
Paul Merson claims Jeremy Doku should have been booked for Arsenal incident
In a recent column for Sportskeeda, Paul Merson had this to say about Trossard’s sending-off and the fact that Jeremy Doku didn’t get a yellow card for appearing to kick the ball in a way in a separate incident.
He said: “Leandro Trossard deserved a red card in my opinion. We want to see football, don’t we? We’re not here to watch people kicking the ball away.
“I’ve played the game for a long time and that’s not how you pass a ball. Trossard wasn’t passing it to his teammate, he was just booting the ball away.
“But the problem I have here is with the consistency. Jeremy Doku did the same thing and he didn’t get punished. That’s not fair.”
Doku wasn’t time-wasting against Arsenal
On the subject of time-wasting, Silva said after the match that Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya was the main culprit in terms of the Gunners trying to waste time throughout the game.
At one stage in the first half, the Gunners had won a free-kick but were taking their time in getting the game going again.
While Michael Oliver was pointing at the area where the free-kick was supposed to be taken, Doku kicked the ball towards that area, resulting in Arsenal fans and players claiming that the City winger was delaying the restart and should have been yellow carded.
However, with the winger getting the ball to where it needed to be in a quicker fashion than any Arsenal players were, this shows that he was doing the opposite of delaying the restart and actually wanted to get it going as quickly as possible and so, therefore, didn’t warrant a card.
Taking that into account, it feels like Merson either doesn’t know the rules of the game, wasn’t focusing on the game in that particular instance or just wants something to complain about as his former side failed to beat the champions again.
