The law says Arsenal deserved a penalty, but should it really work that way?

The law says Arsenal deserved a penalty, but should it really work that way? Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images Arsenal ’s 1-0 win against Hull City on Saturday afternoon was enough to send the Premier League champions into the international break with a five-point lead over second-placed Brighton & Hove Albion . Under normal circumstances, there probably wouldn’t be too much to say about a win secured when Martin Odegaard dispatched the rebound from a Noni Madueke shot. However, Arsenal being Arsenal, obviously, the victory came with a pretty major talking point. I refer, of course, to the penalty Arsenal should have been awarded, by the letter of the law, Law 11 to be specific, in the first half. The law says this: “If a player in an offside position is moving towards the ball with the intention of playing the ball, and is fouled before playing or attempting to play the ball, or challenging an opponent for the ball, the foul is penalised as it has occurred before the offside offence”. So, for once, it’s pretty clear. Yes, Kai Havertz was offside, but as he was fouled, and the foul is, or should be, penalised before the offside offence, everyone, even Dermot Gallagher , is in agreement that, by the letter of the law, Arsenal should have had a penalty. However, Gallagher also went on to question whether, morally, a player in this position should be given a penalty and, you know what? I agree with him. “Whaaaaat?” I know, kill me now. Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images But for me, it’s quite simple. I don’t really see how you can be in an offside position and therefore unable to be an active part of the game, unless, unless , you get fouled. Basically, I subscribe to the view espoused by Darren Cann on Match of the Day : if you’re offside, you’re offside, and that should be the end of it. Perhaps we feel aggrieved today, less so because we won the game anyway, but can you imagine being a Hull City fan and finding out that a penalty had been given for a foul on someone who was offside at the time? I don’t know. To me, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. On top of that, yes, it was a clear shirt tug, but really Havertz, as can sometimes be the case, didn’t need much invitation to go down. I know that, by that phrase again, the letter of the law, it should have been a penalty, but giving a team a free shot at goal in those circumstances seems wrong, really. I’m glad it wasn’t the decisive factor in the game. It’s difficult to be too upset, given Jurrien Timber ’s tug on Alexander Isak , which the officials, well, I don’t know what they were doing up at Liverpool last week. Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images The only explanation I can think of is that the VAR felt Isak wasn’t going to get to the ball regardless of the tug. But, by the letter of the law, that should also have been a penalty. I guess it’s a lot easier to be phlegmatic about a decision not going your way when you win regardless. For now, let’s be grateful we don’t have to consider the alternative, or indeed the Michael Oliver of the situation. I was in a pub with Jo ’s relatives on Saturday afternoon, so I didn’t see the game live. It was funny how my stress at checking for score updates increased once news of the captain’s opening goal came through. Being desperate for the team to do something, like score a goal, is obviously a more positive emotion than wanting them not to do something, like concede one. Jo’s cousin Paul ’s youngest child, Edward , is a seven-year-old Spurs fan. Unfortunately, Paul lost interest in football a while back and, as such, his father-in-law, John , has been free to indoctrinate Edward into some pretty dark ways. Like wearing a Spurs shirt to lunch. Done for my benefit, apparently. I thought this was quite funny, although not as funny as Edward being desperate for his own score updates, only to discover that his team had lost away to Leeds United . We had a moment on the main drag in Guildford , though. Edward spotted an Arsenal shirt somewhere and instinctively started booing the person wearing it. We all go through this, don’t we? I’d like to tell you that I didn’t react by launching immediately, arms aloft, at the top of my voice, into: “And it’s Arsenal, Arsenal FC…” Yeah, I’d like to tell you that and yet… Did I mention that Edward is only seven? Look, a Spurs shirt is a Spurs shirt, right? To be fair to him, given Spurs’ 17th-place finish last season, life has probably got about as bad as it can get for him, what with us winning the league and all, and he’s still there. Respect. The weekend’s entertainment, fortunately, didn’t end with me goading a child. Nottingham Forest finally working out how to put the ball into the big white thing was pretty funny, coming as it did against an apparently Shamchester Manchester City . Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images And in Manchester, Manchester United and Aston Villa contrived to produce a spectacle that somehow delivered even more than it promised. There really was something for everyone. I switched the game on with seven minutes on the clock. Of course, United were two down by then. By half-time they were back on terms and, I thought, deservedly so. I went off to do something else and rejoined the game two minutes into the second half. I’d missed another Villa goal. I went to the toilet. Villa scored again. When Joshua Zirkzee scored three minutes into injury time, there seemed to be a certain inevitability about what would happen next, with Patrick Dorgu obliging to the ecstasy of the United fans who had bothered to stay and watch. Having failed to manage the game to a successful conclusion, not once but twice, Unai Emery , the man everyone and their wife is falling over to tell us is the best manager in the Premier League, stropped off down the touchline and then delivered one of the most graceless post-match interviews I think I’ve ever seen. Emery is exactly the person the football world seems to think Mikel Arteta is and, every time he does something like this, he shows how temperamentally unsuited to managing a properly big club he was and is. Can you imagine how many “think” pieces we’d be reading if Arteta had behaved like Emery did? I’ll stick with my Premier League-winning manager, thanks very much. Aston Villa, with their European Cup nobody under the age of 50 remembers, is about the right level for Emery. Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images