Ex-Premier League referee Mark Halsey has delivered his thoughts on a would-be ban for Erling Haaland following the controversial Premier League clash between Arsenal and Manchester City. The Norway international was at the centre of four huge talking points from the game with the first arriving after just five minutes.
Seemingly in response to Kai Havertz’s shoulder block on Rodri moments after kick-off, Haaland flew into a heavy challenge on William Saliba and was, perhaps, lucky to escape without being shown a card. Four minutes later, the free-scoring Norwegian opened the scoring with an expert finish after being played through by Savinho.
The Gunners responded well to going behind and were ahead just over 30 minutes on from Haaland grabbing the opener. Leandro Trossard’s red card just before half-time changed things significantly though, with Haaland and his teammates then expected to thoroughly dominate the second half.
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Though Arsenal defended really well, Haaland still had some attempts at goal, but it was actually John Stones that finally broke their resistance, sweeping home a penalty box scramble deep into additional time. In response to the ball nestling in the back of the net, Haaland picked it up and threw it at the back of Gabriel’s head with the Arsenal defender facing the other direction.
Complete chaos from Haaland then followed for the next five minutes as he barged into Thomas Partey after Arsenal got the game back underway. Once the full-time whistle had gone, he then clashed again with Gabriel while also getting into a heated disagreement with ex-City star Gabriel Jesus after making his thoughts on Mikel Arteta perfectly clear.
Though he can be heard swearing, the incident during the game with Gabriel is viewed as more ‘serious’ with ex-referee Halsey believing he could face retrospective action. “You could argue it’s violent conduct because it’s like he’s throwing an object at someone’s head. It’s like he’s throwing a punch at someone’s head,” he told The Sun.
“So he can count himself very lucky that [referee] Michael Oliver didn’t see that and VAR didn’t pick it up either. It will be interesting to see if the FA take retrospective action over that incident because it could be construed as violent conduct.” VAR checked the incident, at the time, and cleared it with it also since being made clear that the Football Association will take no further action.
The Sun
