Mikel Arteta has been cleared of a Football Association charge following post-match comments he made after Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat at Newcastle United last month.
The 41-year-old was furious after Anthony Gordon’s 64th-minute goal was allowed to stand despite three separate VAR checks for the ball potentially going out of play, a foul and an offside in the build-up.
Speaking immediately after the match, Arteta said: “It’s a disgrace. It’s embarrassing.”
“That’s how I feel and that’s how everybody feels in that [dressing] room. You cannot imagine the amount of messages we’ve got saying this cannot continue. It’s embarrassing. I’m sorry, embarrassing.
“I feel sick. That’s how I feel. I feel sick to be part of this. It is not good enough and we cannot accept that.”
The FA charged Arteta with a breach of Rule E3.1 — that his comments constituted misconduct in that they were insulting towards match officials and/or detrimental to the game and/or brought the game into disrepute — but an independent commission found that to be “not proven” following an investigation which included Arteta attending a personal hearing.
In the written reasons accompanying the decision, Arteta is described as an “impressive witness” who successfully argued his comments focused on a wider frustration with the VAR process rather than targeting a match official.
It read “[In the post-match interviews] MA expressed his frustration at the VAR Decision and the standard of refereeing and VAR decision-making in the Premier League.
“He did not descend into language which insulted or cast aspersions about particular officials, nor to language which reflected anything other than his reasonably held view, supported by others, that VAR decision-making and officiating standards require improvement.’”
It is also revealed that former Arsenal midfielder Joe Willock, now playing for Newcastle, told his ex-team-mates that he believed the ball had gone out in the build-up to Gordon’s goal and that Arteta’s use of the word “disgrace” had a different meaning in the related Spanish word.
“The word ‘disgrace’ used by MA in the Interviews ‘has a very similar spelling and pronunciation to the Spanish ‘desgracia’ … the Spanish word has connotations of misfortune, tragedy or bad luck rather than the connotations of the English equivalent which suggest contempt, dishonour or disrespect,” continued the written reasons.
“While the English meaning may lead to interpretations of abuse or insult, this was not the intended meaning of the comments.”
Arteta was also said to have made “considerable efforts that he has made in the past [and continues to make] to work with other stakeholders [including the PGMOL and the Chief Refereeing Officer], in the pursuit of improving the standards of match officiating [including VAR officiating] in the Premier League” and that he had “frustration that such efforts [on his part and by others] had ‘failed to produce any meaningful improvements’ in those standards.”.
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