Arsenal are out of the League Cup, losing on penalties to League Two side Fleetwood Town. To be honest, I really couldn’t care less. In both of the last two seasons, Arsenal’s deep runs in this competition have likely done more to hurt the side than help it in terms of fatigue and injury. It’s annoying to lose to such lowly opposition and even more frustrating that plenty of senior players had off nights, but the bottom line is that the result really doesn’t matter much at all in the grand scheme of this season.

The first half was a sloppy one from the Gunners. The pace of play was slow. There were far too many loose touches and misplayed passes. Caedach O’Neill and Max Dowman were the only positive standouts. Everybody else was mediocre to poor. Cristhian Mosquera looked particularly rusty. Piero Hincapie couldn’t get the weight of his final ball right.

Marli Salmon was a bit unfortunate on Fleetwood’s goal. He got out-muscled, as you might expect in a battle of strength between a 17-year old and a 20-year old, but did well to recover and get a foot on the ball with his sliding tackle. Unfortunately, the ball stuck right where it was instead of bouncing to safety. I’m not really sure what Illan Meslier was doing. He looked to get caught in no man’s land and the ball went through his legs.

It just wasn’t Kai Havertz’s night. He did just about everything you’d like to see an attacker do but the final touch kept eluding him. He’d like to have two headers back, one in each half — Jurrien Timber also missed a golden headed opportunity.

Viktor Gyokeres, on the other hand, woof. He did score Arsenal’s only goal, but I’m pretty sure it was an accident. He took a heavy touch and somehow, perhaps accidentally, made enough contact with the ball on his spinning way to the ground that it eluded the goalkeeper. There isn’t much to say about the striker that hasn’t been said already. He doesn’t provide enough without the ball to also not be scoring more. You can’t have a low touch, low goals striker, particularly not at Arsenal.

And even with all that, Arsenal were overwhelming statistical favorites to win the match based on how it played out. They were simply snakebitten in the opposing box. Sometimes that happens. I’d much rather get variance’d / football’d in a Carabao Cup 4th round match in October than pretty much at any other point of the season.

The Max Dowman incident that saw him sent off was a travesty of refereeing. The challenge on him flew in from behind, came with excessive force, leg raised, and finished with a scissors. It was a horror tackle. Dowman is lucky he didn’t get seriously injured. Instead, he was sent off for his leg / lower body thrust in retaliation at the player who could have ended his season and was still wrapped around his lower legs. I guess it looked like a kick-0ut to the referee (it wasn’t) because the Arsenal winger was shown a straight red card.

You can forgive Dowman for thinking his conduct wasn’t too big of an issue given Cole Palmer was only shown a yellow card for blasting an opponent in the head with his hip over the weekend.

The refereeing in England is broken. It’s a joke. I’m livid that some League Two nobody got away without sanction for a vicious tackle on an opponent — it doesn’t matter that it was Arsenal or our young starlet. That kind of stuff has no place in the game. The decision to show Dowman a straight red for his (understandable) reaction, particularly when there really wasn’t much in it at all, is a joke.

Compare what the two players did to each other. Now compare the punishment. Absurd.

I really don’t care about the refereeing decision in the context of the effect on today’s match. What gets me is that week in, week out, referees show they do not care about player safety. They consistently are below standard. That challenge — and Dowman’s reaction — is exactly what you get when you allow a team to grab, hold, trip, and generally get away with levels of physicality that cross the line. The team that keeps getting away with fouls feels emboldened and the players getting fouled all game will eventually react in frustration to the fouls and the perceived lack of protection. That referees do not recognize the phenomenon is wild, to me.

The silver lining is that come the busy portion of the schedule when the calendar turns over, Arsenal will have a few extra midweeks off instead of tough, pressure-packed fixtures. It’ll probably make the lads just the slightest bit angry and motivated to stick it to Liverpool this weekend.