Mikel Arteta joked after Arsenal’s win over Tottenham Hotspur that the match officials should be in line for a big fine.
In what was generally a good afternoon for Arsenal fans, one frustrating element of the 4-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur was the lengthy delay caused by communication issues between the match officials.
After an excellent Arsenal start to the first half, the game was held up by a number of minutes as the officials tried to fix their issue. They then had the same problem in the second half, delaying kick-off to resolve the problem again.
Mikel Arteta shared a joke with reporters about the issue afterwards, suggesting the officials should be in line for a fine.
“Every time we are [late] out of the dressing room, we get huge fines, so I said to them, who’s going to get this fine?” Arteta joked.
“Because that’s six, seven, eight, nine minutes, so someone is going to get a big fine.
“I’m sure that everyone is going to look at Sky, Sky probably to the Premier League, the Premier League to Sky, so, yeah, we’ve got one in the bag now.”
Given the result, Arteta probably wasn’t genuinely angry about the delays. But if the game had gone the other way, you could understand if the Arsenal manager was unhappy about it.
Arsenal had started the game so well, only to have that early momentum killed. But the second-half delay was arguably even more frustrating, as the officials had the entire half-time break to work on the problem, yet they only started fixing it when the game was meant to be getting underway.
For the fans, that meant leaving the ground much later than expected. For the players, that meant needing to stay warm and alert for around 15 minutes longer than in a normal match.
It’s just fortunate that in this particular case, Arsenal won the game comfortably and have a week off to rest before the next one.