Arsenal receive new referee verdict on red card decision as Premier League told mistake made

Arsenal could have gone down to 10 men during their win against Aston Villa with the Premier League told a red card decision mistake was made.

Arsenal and the Premier League have been told by a former referee that Mikel Merino should have been sent off against Aston Villa. The Gunners secured a huge 4-1 victory over their title rivals on Tuesday night at the Emirates Stadium, but the final 30 minutes could have played out very differently.

Goals from Gabriel Magalhaes and Martin Zubimendi - in the space of four second-half minutes - put Arsenal in control with another massive talking point coming just before the hour-mark. As Morgan Rogers looked to have broken free, Spain international Merino pulled him back by the shirt to commit a foul.

Villa protested that it should have been the Spaniard's second yellow of the match - having been shown an initial caution for a foul on Amadou Onana just before the interval. Former Premier League referee Mark Halsey has since been asked for his thoughts on the flashpoint.

He wrote to X (formerly Twitter): "Hi Mark, this was a deliberate holding offence by Merino on Rogers that should have resulted in a 2nd [yellow card emoji] for denying a promising attack."

When asked if it comes into the referee's mind that a player has already been booked, Halsey replied: "Not every challenge is a [yellow card emoji], Mark.

"Referee's will judge challenge's on its merits, IMO there are far to many [yellow card emoji] shown unnecessarily referee's have lost the art of managing these players - the holding offence by Merino was a nailed on 2nd [yellow card emoji]."

Had Merino been dismissed, Villa could have come back into the game but, with Arteta realising that possibility, the Spaniard was taken off just over 10 minutes later.

Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Jesus later got on the score-sheet with Ollie Watkins also netting a stoppage-time consolation goal for the visitors.

The win took Arsenal six points clear of Villa and put pressure on their title rivals Man City to break Sunderland's unbeaten record at the Stadium of Light.

Following the huge victory, Arteta held a press conference and could barely hide his joy at such the display.

He said: "I'm so happy. We play every three days, we played an opponent today that comes from 11 wins in a row. Superb team, very difficult to play against, and we knew that we were going to have periods throughout the game.

"We talked about emotionally how demanding it was going to be and we struggled in the first ten minutes, arriving a bit late, playing through us and creating some open space situations that they are very dangerous at.

"Then we adjusted, got a bit more control, two big chances by Víktor and the one was a scrappy situation inside the box. We didn't manage to score in the second half.

"We competed for everything then much better. The timing was better and the goal was fulfilled in an extraordinary way, so efficient in everything that we did. Unlike the last few games where we had so many big situations, today we were very prolific and accurate to make the difference."