Arsenal were at the heart of plenty of controversial decisions in the 2024/25 Premier League season.
But according to the Premier League’s Key match Incidents panel, only one VAR decision involving Arsenal was wrong during the season.
The Gunners ended the campaign in second place for the third season running, runners-up behind Liverpool on this occasion, finishing ten points adrift of the eventual champions.
Refereeing decisions were unlikely to have been the cause of ten dropped points throughout the campaign, but there are bound to be numerous Arsenal supporters who could make an argument for that being the case.
The season got under way with two hugely contentious decisions in the opening five weeks of the campaign.
Declan Rice was sent off for the first time in his career when penalised with a second yellow card for kicking the ball away in the game against Brighton & Hove Albion at the Amex Stadium. Arsenal had been leading the game 1-0 and ended up drawing 1-1, thus losing two points.
Manager Mikel Arteta later claimed Rice “passed the ball” given how minimal the kick was from Rice. Then, two games later, the same happened again for a different Arsenal player.
Leandro Trossard was accused of kicking the ball away – he actually did boot the ball away in this instance – right on half-time against Manchester City following the referee’s whistle for a foul. Again, Arsenal were leading in the game but ended up drawing, thus losing two points. Arteta later claimed his team would “play without the ball”.
There was another incident against Brighton in the return match, when the Seagulls were awarded a penalty for what appeared to be an unintentional headbutt by William Saliba on Joao Pedro in trying to win a header in the box. Replays showed Saliba did get a slight touch on the ball first, albeit minimal. Once again, Arsenal drew the match, having led 1-0, thus losing two points.
Myles Lewis-Skelly was also sent off in gameweek 23 against Wolves for stopping a Wolves attack, bringing down Matt Doherty while inside his own half. The red card was a strange decision and was later overturned on appeal.
This one was the only one of the incidents in the season involving Arsenal that was deemed to have been wrong by the Key Match Incidents panel.
There were 17 other VAR incidents in the Premier League that were deemed to have been wrong, but no others involved Arsenal.
