Former Premier League referee Keith Hackett has explained why ‘careless’ William Saliba deserved to be sent off during Arsenal’s defeat to Bournemouth. Mikel Arteta’s side finally surrendered their unbeaten start to the season at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday evening.

Second-half goals from Ryan Christie and Justin Kluivert secured the Cherries all three points; however, the main talking point of the game arrived in the first when Saliba was shown a straight red card for bringing down Evanilson close to the centre circle. The incident occurred following a poor pass from Leandro Trossard.

There was plenty of debate online about whether the centre-back deserved to be given his marching orders. However, Hackett, writing in The Telegraph, has detailed why the Frenchman was correctly shown a straight red card.

He said: “William Saliba saw a red card in the first half of the match against Bournemouth and thanks to his clumsy effort as the last defender, he deserved to be sent off.

“When you look at the law around the denial of an obvious goal-scoring opportunity, the following must be considered: the distance between the offence and the goal; the general direction of the play; the likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball; the location and number of defenders in the area.

“In this incident, with Bournemouth on the attack, Evanilson got the wrong side of Saliba and looked to be clean through on goal before he came together with the defender and was brought down. Upon review after stepping aside to watch replays of the moment, referee Rob Jones cancelled out the yellow card he had already flashed and showed Saliba a red instead.”

 

Before he concluded: “The challenge by Saliba was careless so the referee is always going to award a free-kick in this area of the pitch, in line with the law, so it should be a red card.”