It’s back! Some with a bang, some with a whimper and for Arsenal, it seems to be calamity as usual – The Premier League is officially back on.
There are some changes, however, as crowd noise replaces actual crowds and players return to playing 90 minutes of the highest quality football after their longest break they’ve probably ever had in their professional careers. Two weeks is usually all a top player will receive when it comes to holidays throughout the year, so with three months spent at home with the family it was interesting to see how they would slot back into the beautiful game.
Injuries
Arsenal have played two games since the return of the Premier League on Thursday 18June, and less than a week later they have lost three first team players to possibly season ending injuries. Granit Xhaka and Pablo Mari both picked up injuries in their 3-0 loss to Manchester City and Bernd Leno went off in a 2-1 loss to Brighton in what is rumoured to be an ACL injury which could see him out for some considerable time.
Returning to action after three months of nothing but home workouts and Zoom yoga sessions means returning to the rough and tumble and electric pace of Premier League football players are at a much higher risk of picking up an injury. Teams seemed to notice this from the early games and since then, the first halves of most games have been slower, more mild-mannered affairs.
VAR is still a problem
We were always told that VAR would shine a light on difficult decisions, making them easier to deal with. What we never saw coming was the staff at Villa park forgetting to turn on the goal line technology which saw a perfectly good Sheffield United goal ruled out. Although we could see the ball had clearly crossed the goal line, with Villa keeper Nyland cradling the ball as he pretty much sat in the net, referee Paul Tierney’s watch didn’t bleep and play was resumed with no goal given.
His watch was s reported to have started indicating a goal when the teams were in their changing rooms at half time prompting questions of whether VAR should have intervened.