Arsenal to Make Double Appeal on Saturday's Red Card

According to the Daily Mail and at least one other English media source, Arsenal will make two appeals related to the 15th-minute red card that will live in infamy from Saturday's match against Chelsea, with the scoreline we won't talk about.

The first matter should be easy to resolve -- referee Andre Marriner inexplicably confused Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, diving toward the far post to bat away Eden Hazard's 15th-minute shot, with Kieran Gibbs, who was standing a few yards in front of the far post, has a slighter build and narrower face than his teammate, and wears a completely different number per FA rules. It is expected that Gibbs will be cleared of his red card, since he did nothing wrong.

The second matter has to do with whether Oxlade-Chamberlain, auditioning for emergency goal-keeping duties on the shot attempt, deserved a red card in the first place. If Oxlade-Chamberlain denied Hazard a clear goal-scoring opportunity, the red card was correctly awarded, but if the shot was wide, and it was merely a handball in the box, the correct call would have been a yellow card plus the awarding of a penalty kick. Based on the replays, the shot was probably close enough to being on target that a red card was merited. But, then again, given how embarrassing the whole affair is for the FA, it's conceivable that they won't shift the red card over to Oxlade-Chamberlain in order to prevent the story from getting additional legs, which would probably be the prudent PR thing to do. (But, then again, it is the FA, so a suspension for Ox might be coming.)