{"id":13306,"date":"2026-01-17T23:04:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=13306"},"modified":"2026-01-17T23:04:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:04:01","slug":"arsenal-held-to-goalless-draw-at-nottingham-forest-but-should-gunners-have-been-awarded-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=13306","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal held to goalless draw at Nottingham Forest &#8211; but should Gunners have been awarded penalty?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Aina handball incident happened with about 10 minutes of the match remaining. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Forest right-back attempted to control a bouncing ball in his own penalty area while being challenged by Gabriel Jesus and bumped by his own team-mate Elliot Anderson. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The ball hit Aina&#8217;s shoulder before striking his arm as the defender tried to turn, prompting Arteta and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/arsenal\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Arsenal<\/a> to vehemently appeal for a spot-kick &#8211; to no avail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Premier League Match Centre on X said: &#8220;The referee&#8217;s call of no penalty to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/arsenal\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Arsenal<\/a> was checked and confirmed by VAR &#8211; with it deemed that the ball was played off Aina&#8217;s shoulder first, while his arm was also in a natural position.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While Arteta was adamant his side had been denied a &#8220;clear penalty&#8221;, Forest boss Sean Dyche, unsurprisingly, did not agree.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think if these start to get given we&#8217;ve all got to leave it. I think that&#8217;s ridiculous. We&#8217;ve got to be careful with those,&#8221; Dyche said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You may as well cancel football if you&#8217;re going to give that [as handball]. The rules have to be careful. You know what they should be looking at? People feigning injury. That&#8217;s the new diving.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Retired Premier League assistant referee Darren Cann told BBC Sport he thought the officials had come to the correct decision, saying: &#8220;The arm is close to the body and is in a justifiable position.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The decision split the watching pundits, with ex-<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/chelsea\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Chelsea<\/a> winger Pat Nevin telling BBC Radio 5 Live he thought Aina&#8217;s arm &#8220;moved towards the ball&#8221;, but former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/liverpool\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Liverpool<\/a> midfielder Steven Gerrard insisting it would have been &#8220;soft&#8221; to award a spot-kick for the incident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Arsenal #held #goalless #draw #Nottingham #Forest #Gunners #awarded #penalty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Aina handball incident hap&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}