Gabriel Magalhaes left Arsenal in the lurch at the Emirates after he was booked twice in three minutes to leave Manchester City playing against 10 men for the last half hour of their Premier League clash.
Arsenal had taken a deserved lead over the league leaders in the first half through Bukayo Saka’s left-footed strike.
That lead though was wiped out by Riyad Mahrez from the penalty spot just before the hour mark after a lengthy interruption from the Video Assistant Referee (VAR).
Gabriel then tried to scuff up the penalty spot before Mahrez took the kick, although it made little impact on the successful penalty, and was booked afterwards for dissent.
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“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” said former Liverpool, Man City and England winger Steve McManaman on BT Sport‘s coverage of the game, where it initially appeared the booking had been for his work on the penalty spot.
“He deserves it, Gabriel. Fancy getting a yellow card for scuffing the spot up.
“I mean, talk about ill discipline. Talk about effectively throwing the game away. They deserve it, I’m sorry.
“The team were flying and he’s now to done this to his 10 teammates, absolutely ridiculous.”
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Arsenal legend Martin Keown said: “It’s about keeping your head. You have to, the majority of your career you have to do that, manage the games.
“And now of course it’s almost given the game to City.”
Two more centre-backs in the BT Sport studio were no less damning of Gabriel’s behaviour.
“This is stupid. This is immature. This is petulant,” said Rio Ferdinand.
Joleon Lescott added: “This is crazy decision-making. Emotions were high, I get that, but the worrying thing is that it didn’t surprise us. We’ve seen that before, and that will happen again.”
Keown added at the time: “Now with 10 it’s going to be very difficult for Arsenal to get anything out of this game.”
And Keown was right, as City midfielder Rodri poked home an injury-time winner.
“When you have already a yellow card, you have to control your emotions and be smart,” said Arsenal assistant manager Albert Stuivenberg, standing in for Mikel Arteta who was absent due to Covid.
“And I’m not sure why the first yellow card was given to Gabriel but I hear some different things about that, but it’s not important anymore. But if you have it of course you need to control your emotions. It’s something we need to learn.”
Stuivenberg later said that players had told him the yellow card was for dissent with Gabriel complaining about VAR’s failure in the first half to overturn the decision of the referee in the first half when City goalkeeper Ederson collided with Martin Odegaard, who, slow-motion replays showed, had got to the ball marginally before his opponent.
And after the break it was Bernardo Silva on the ground with the referee telling him to get him up – only for VAR Jarred Gillett to review the incident and tell Attwell to review what he saw as a clear and obvious error. He returned to the pitch to overturn his original decision and was confronted by Granit Xhaka, who was subsequently booked for his dissent.
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