VAR AND REFEREE ERROR 》Hakimi red card, Timber penalty, slow Merino – Arsenal vs PSG Champions League referee review Referee Slavko Vincic left both sets of supporters angry during the Champions League semi-final first leg at the Emirates Stadium

A big occasion at the Emirates Stadium called for a big performance – not just the players from both Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain, but from the officials too.

And it must be said that they performance of the referee might have left a number of supporters disappointed.

While Mikel Arteta and the Arsenal fans may not have been too enamoured by the Gunners’ players’ performances on the night – with five getting less than a score of seven in our football.london player ratings – the performance of referee Slavko Vincic left a lot to be desired too.

Vincic set out his stall early and that was to make it a stop-start game in north London. There was no flow about the game with the referee taking to his whistle regularly, but then there were question marks over the brandishing of cards in certain situations too.

Here football.london takes a look at the big refereeing talking points during the Champions League semi-final first leg.

I’m going down, I’m yelling Timber

At 1-0 up, PSG were all over Arsenal and when Khvicha Kvaratskhelia went tumbling in the box, things could have got a lot worse in the first half.

The Georgian box of tricks squeezed through a couple of Arsenal challenges to make his way into the left-hand side of the penalty area, before going down under a challenge from Jurrien Timber.

Timber had his arm across the forward’s front, looking like he was blocking him off and Kvaratskhelia went down. Vincic was having none of it though and VAR did not intervene either. On commentary for Amazon Prime, Alan Shearer called it “very risky” from Timber.

football.london verdict : Timber did have his arm across Kvaratskhelia and it was, as Shearer said, a risky move. However, he did not leave his arm there long and was it enough for the Georgian to go down? We don’t think so. It was one of those where it could have been given and VAR probably would not have overturned it, so the referee’s call stands and it was perhaps a fortunate one for Arsenal.

Saka yellow card

Bukayo Saka could not get himself into the game on Tuesday night. Nuno Mendes gave him a tough game and when the Englishman did get on the ball, he often found more than one PSG player around him and could not work the space, nor find telling passes.

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But there was one big incident with Mendes that left the player – and the supporters – up in arms.

As Mendes looked to shield the ball out of play for a throw-in, Saka put him under pressure and Mendes went down in front of the assistant referee. Saka gleefully ran away with the ball, bearing down on goal, but the assistant referee had already flagged for a foul and Vincic blew his whistle.

Saka could not believe it, he was raging with the decision and in his anger toe-punted the ball away. He was duly booked and it would serve to sum up his night in an Arsenal shirt.

football.london verdict : Saka booted the ball away and he was right to be cautioned for it. However, we have sympathy with the Arsenal frontman: it was not a foul on Mendes and he should have been allowed to go on and possibly score.

Slow-Merino

The big talking point from an Arsenal point of view was the goal they scored on the night.

Having struggled for much of the first half, the Gunners came out for the second period with renewed vigour and with less than 90 seconds after the break they had the ball in the PSG net.

Declan Rice sent a sumptuous free-kick into the danger area and Mikel Merino was among six Arsenal players to initially start in an offside position, well behind the set-up PSG defence and find room amongst the defenders in the box.

Merino headed past Gianluigi Donnarumma to send the Emirates Stadium into raptures, but after a long VAR wait, he was deemed to have been offside and the goal was ruled out by the Semi-Automated Offside Technology in effect.

football.london verdict : There’s no denying it was the right call, Merino was offside. The tactic of players running from deep offside and into the mix of the PSG defenders was used on more than one occasion on the night and it had an impact, but there’s no legislation for running through the drills and someone being offside. Merino was one of the slowest to get into position in the box for the free-kick and that may have cost him and Arsenal.

Hakimi red card

As we mentioned above Vincic was whistle happy and set his stall out with a yellow card for Leandro Trossard early in the match. Trossard had stopped a counter-attack by PSG, which is something you are routinely cautioned for, so it was not an issue, although it would become one with other fouls not deemed worthy of a yellow card.

The feeling inside the stadium was that Arsenal were not getting any decisions from Vincic, although it can be said PSG fell foul of a few poor calls too.

What will have rile many though was the number of fouls Achraf Hakimi made. The Moroccan committed five fouls in the match – more than any other player on the pitch.

He was not booked until the 44th minute, having barged Timber off the ball. That had been his third foul of the night. But in the second period, with the clock ticking down, Gabriel Martinelli got the better of the full-back and went over his trailing leg.

A free-kick was given in a dangerous position, but Hakimi was not given a second yellow card.

football.london verdict : There was minimal contact from Hakimi on Martinelli but once the referee gives a free-kick he has a big decision to make, particularly given its proximity to the box and the threat Arsenal posed at the time. Five fouls could lead to two yellow cards quite easily and Hakimi was a nuisance all night that the Gunners would have preferred not to have come up against in the second leg had he been suspended. It may well have been harsh to send him off for a minimal contact foul, but the accumulation of fouls certainly warranted a discussion about it.