Arsenal have been fined £65,000 for failing to ensure that their players acted in a proper manner during last month's 1-0 Premier League win over Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Mikel Arteta's men left Molineux with a slender success to their name on January 25 thanks to a Riccardo Calafiori goal, but the scoreline was trivial compared to the controversial incident in the first half.
Arsenal academy graduate Myles Lewis-Skelly was given a straight red card by Michael Oliver for bringing down Matt Doherty as he tried to lead a Wolves counter-attack, triggering a furious reaction from his Gunners teammates.
The VAR room agreed with Oliver's assessment that Lewis-Skelly's foul amounted to serious foul play, but Arsenal appealed the incident, and Lewis-Skelly's red card and subsequent three-game ban was immediately overturned.
However, the Gunners were then subsequently charged with a breach of FA Rule E20.1, as it was alleged that they failed to ensure that their players did not act in an improper manner as they swarmed around Oliver, who allegedly received death threats after the match.
FA reveals reasons for Arsenal fine after Lewis-Skelly red
© Imago
Arsenal have admitted to that charge and have now been slapped with a £65,000 fine by the Football Association, who published the Independent Regulatory Commission's reasons for imposing that punishment on the Gunners.
"The Commission noted that it is important in this case not to conflate the decision of the Referee to dismiss Myles Lewis-Skelly ('MLS') and the subsequent overturning of that decision with the matter at hand," a statement read.
"Football matches are invariably peppered with controversial refereeing decisions and it is incumbent upon football clubs to make sure that their players accept those decisions even when their players vehemently believe that a mistake has been made by the Referee.
"As such the Commission did not consider the correctness of the Referee's decision to send off MLS as having been a relevant consideration in terms of mitigation.
"Notwithstanding the above, the Commission accept that in the highly charged environment of Premier League football, it is not unnatural for players to react to what they perceive to be an obviously incorrect decision made by the Referee, especially one that could have a great bearing on the eventual result, such as a sending off.
"This, however, is simply the background to the charge and ought not to permeate into the mind of the Commission when assessing the correct level of sanction to be imposed for an E20 breach where players have gone beyond that which is deemed correct and acceptable when approaching and communicating with a Referee in respect to a particular grievance."
Arsenal's history of FA rule breaches after £65,000 fine
© Imago
Arsenal's latest indiscretion and fine means that the Gunners have committed a total of six E20 rule breaches since the start of 2022, although this incident was their first of such a kind since early 2023.
The Gunners were fined five times between January 2022 and February 2023 for players failing to act in a proper way, firstly in their home loss to Manchester City on New Year's Day 2022, where they were hit with a £20k sanction.
Later that year, Arsenal were again fined the same amount after their away win against Leeds United, and two £40,000 fines were handed down for incidents against Newcastle United and Oxford United in the space of six days in January 2023.
Prior to the Lewis-Skelly incident, Arsenal's most recent breach was committed against Man City in February 2023 - which led to a £65k punishment - and the Commission noted that Arteta's side have made great strides to improve such behaviour.
However, given that Oliver and the VAR room's decision was proven to have been incorrect - another embarrassment for the PGMOL - it is hard not to justify Arsenal's furious on-field reaction.
Ben Knapton
