If this weekend produced a defining moment in the Premier League season, it was not Leandro Trossard’s goal that sent Arsenal five points clear at the top of the table, nor even David Raya’s superb save to deny Mateus Fernandes moments earlier.
More emblematic of the campaign was the sight of VAR officials at Stockley Park spending five minutes in stoppage time scrutinising screens to determine whether a goal should stand after a chaotic corner-kick wrestling match. Arsenal goalkeeper Raya was clearly held and impeded by West Ham’s Pablo before Callum Wilson scored from the loose ball. Raya’s sleeve was pulled as he jumped, making it an obvious foul.
The problem? At least three other clear fouls occurred simultaneously: Jean-Clair Todibo on Raya, Declan Rice on Konstantinos Mavropanos, and Martin Odegaard on Todibo. Kai Havertz and Tomas Soucek wrestled to the floor, while Mavropanos grappled with Myles Lewis-Skelly, who briefly held Crysencio Summerville. As former Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp remarked on Sky Sports, “It was like watching the Super Bowl. Chaos.”
Penalty-box mayhem has defined the 2025-26 Premier League season. It began with PGMOL chief Howard Webb announcing a clampdown on set-piece grappling, but the opposite has occurred, with almost every corner becoming a free-for-all. Players from both sides hold and impede each other with impunity, and even clear fouls like Pablo’s on Raya have often gone unpunished.
Goals per game have dropped from 3.28 two seasons ago to 2.93 last season and 2.75 this term. Open-play goals are way down. Many tight matches are decided not by improvisation but by set-piece routines and officials’ interpretations of scrummages at corners, often producing a grim spectacle.
In this case, referee Chris Kavanagh, after being sent to the monitor by VAR Darren England, ruled that the foul on Raya rendered everything else moot. Former Premier League referee Graham Scott wrote that while the foul was clear, Arsenal might still consider themselves fortunate because “several goals have been allowed this season even when the keeper was blocked or pinned to his goal line by an opponent.” That is the crux: so many corner-kick fouls have gone unpunished this season, with at least three occurring in the same incident.
