Arsenal to appeal Giroud red card

After some question about whether they would, Arsenal have decided to appeal Olivier Giroud's late red card in their 1-0 victory at Fulham last Saturday. As things stand, he's in for a three-match suspension, which would keep him out of games against Manchester United, QPR, and Wigan.

Giroud was sent off for a pretty dumb foul - he was going for the ball at the same time as Fulham's Stanislav Manolev, but somehow missed it altogether, and ended up half-stepping on it, half-tripping Manolev. It was a horrible (in terms of quality) tackle, but honestly not nearly as violent as the foul for which Steve Sidwell was sent off earlier in the match (which, by the way, I'm also not certain should have been a red card, but this post is about Giroud).

Here's a GIF of the tackle, via Arsenalist.

It's certainly a booking to me, mostly because What An Idiot, but is this really worth a three-game ban? For me, it's not. But I suppose we'll see whether the people in charge of things agree. A ruling of the appeal as frivolous is unlikely, so really it's between a reduction of the ban, or the ban being upheld. With the homestretch of the season looming, it would really be ideal to have all hands on deck.