Arsenal has a red card problem and it's hurting Mikel Arteta's team

CNN

On Wednesday, the English Football Association (FA) announced that they were looking into a yellow card received by an Arsenal player following reports of suspicious betting patterns.

Yellow isn’t the only type of card proving problematic for Arsenal at the moment.

Thomas Partey’s red card in Thursday’s Carabao Cup semifinal defeat to Liverpool was the team’s 14th since manager Mikel Arteta took charge of the club in December 2019 — six more than any other team in the Premier League during the same period.

The context of Partey’s dismissal made for even grimmer reading.

The Ghanaian touched down in London at lunchtime following his country’s shock early exit from the Africa Cup of Nations, allowing Arteta to name the midfielder on the bench for a home second-leg tie very much in the balance following a gritty 0-0 draw in the first-leg at Anfield.

It was a first-leg result made more valuable by the fact that the Gunners had played most of the game with 10 men, following Granit Xhaka’s straight red — the fifth of his Arsenal career — just 24 minutes into the game.

Fast forward to the Emirates on Thursday and second-half substitute Partey was dismissed in even less time — taking just 16 minutes to pick up two yellow cards and be sent off in the game’s closing stages.

Granted, Diogo Jota’s brace had rendered Partey’s exit ultimately irrelevant to the overall result — Liverpool’s safe passage to a final meeting at Wembley against Chelsea looked assured long before the Ghanaian’s dismissal — but a third red card in four matches is a glaring evidence of Arsenal’s ill-discipline.