Michael Oliver failed to do the basics of refereeing for Arsenal’s first goal at Man City

Referee Michael Oliver was a busy man during Manchester City’s 2-2 draw against Arsenal, with an entertaining game featuring three controversial incidents.

After Oliver called over Man City captain Kyle Walker, City were angered that he did not give the right-back time to retake his position as Arsenal scored from a quick free-kick.

The contest hinged on Oliver’s decision to send off Arsenal forward Leandro Trossard seconds before half-time, showing him a second yellow for delaying a restart.

Arsenal and Mikel Arteta believe Jeremy Doku should have been booked for a very similar infringement just minutes earlier.

Keith Hackett runs the rule over the afternoon’s big decisions.

Doku yellow card

Sunday’s match at the Etihad was always going to be a tense affair with passions understandably running high. England’s No 1 referee Michael Oliver remained calm throughout and his approach to the game seemed to be that he wanted to keep his cards in his pocket and avoid issuing cheap sanctions, but it led to questionable decisions.

I think that is why he showed leniency to Jeremy Doku in the first half for kicking the ball away. It may well be that Oliver believed Doku was trying to kick the ball back to an Arsenal player but the Manchester City winger can consider himself very lucky not to have been shown a yellow card - especially after Declan Rice received a second yellow on Aug 31 for tapping the ball away against Brighton, allegedly delaying the restart.

Calafiori goal

I can well understand the fury of the Manchester City player’s over the circumstances behind Arsenal’s first goal, scored by Riccatdo Calfiori.

Oliver had pulled Kyle Walker out of his right-back position to talk to him and Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka in the centre circle after awarding a free kick to Arsenal, the referee presumably demanding an Improvement in the behaviour of the players.

In basic refereeing, if you have pulled a player out of position to talk to him you must allow them the opportunity to return to take up their station before signalling a restart. Oliver failed to do that and the error was further compounded when the kick was taken from the wrong position.

In these situations Oliver would expect his assistants to intervene. Clearly they did not.

Trossard red card

Arsenal players were up in arms when Trossard was shown a second yellow card for kicking the ball away after clattering into Bernardo Silva and delaying the restart. They pointed out Doku’s lucky escape earlier in the game for an identical offence.

But Trossard forced Oliver’s hand, I believe, in that there was a degree of time-wasting in the player’s actions, something referees have been told to clamp down on this season.

Overall this was a difficult game but I would have liked to have seen Oliver use his expertise linked with a little more common sense, something that appears to be lacking in our current cadre of match officials.