It was a clash of heads. They both headed the ball. You see this sort of thing almost every weekend. There was an incident in the Spurs v Toon match where Gordon was taken out with a shoulder to the head, proper roughed him up and gave him a nosebleed. Was that a pen ?
If Saliba had gone down clutching his head like Pedro did, the ref would have just stopped the game for a clash of heads Because that's what it ****in was Mental to give a penalty in that situation.
Can we have one please? At this rate we'll be lining up against Liverpool midweek with the tea lady at LB.
This happens ALL the time. Literally every game this happens - it's only a foul when an Arsenal player does it. Saliba actually headed the ball first as well.
Are you for real? The Brighton player won the ball, turned and then was fouled when Saliba banged his head into his. There’s not even a debate to be had unless you’re unbelievably blinkered.
Well, for what it's worth, no matter who we play on Tuesday evening, I'm not confident at all of getting a positive result against Newcastle. They seem to have hit form at a time when they need to, whereas we're picking up injuries/absences and stumbling along during a critical period of the season. We need to find a way of getting through this period otherwise we could get dumped out of the cups pretty soon if we're not careful.
In fairness, I have seen quite a few rival fans and even a couple of Brighton fans online say they didn't think it was a penalty on Twitter/X. For me, I can understand why it's given and I don't think it's the worst decision in the world. So I find the outrage a bit bizarre. My bigger issue is, regardless of whether it was a penalty or not, what were we doing before it was given and what did we do the 30+ minutes after it was given to get back into the game? There was plenty of time to get a winner, yet we didn't have a single shot on target after Pedro equalised. And that's been too common a theme this season - which is why we've accumulated so many draws. We have the most draws out of any team in the top-8. It's just not good enough.
And you have me on egg shells that you’re going to blow it against Newcastle. Will you play your strongest team available for this one?
With the form they're in at the moment, and our struggles this season against deep/mid-blocks, I honestly think that Newcastle tie could go either way. I can't say I'm confident in the slightest. I'd like to think Arteta will field the strongest XI available, but at this point, with injuries and absences, I'm not sure what our strongest XI is. Nwaneri apparently picked up a significant injury against Brighton, which is why he was subbed off at HT. So we're pretty light in attack and defence right now... Just gonna have to hope for the best..
