Leandro Trossard was Arsenal’s hero on Saturday, scoring in the first half and then forcing a dramatic stoppage-time goal with his shot deflecting off Leicester City’s Wilfred Ndidi for an own goal. That put Arsenal 3-2 up, and on course for victory.
But there is a legitimate question whether Trossard should even have been on the pitch.
No, this isn’t anything to do with a controversial refereeing decision; he hadn’t kicked the ball away after a whistle earlier in this game. Instead, it’s all to do with one of English football’s quirkiest, or perhaps most nonsensical, rules.
Trossard was sent off the previous weekend for picking up two bookings during Arsenal’s 2-2 draw away at Manchester City. That earned him a one-match suspension, but it wasn’t served in the Premier League. Instead, Trossard was banned for Arsenal’s Carabao Cup tie against Bolton Wanderers.
It’s a peculiarity of the suspension rules that, of course, had Arsenal not played in the Carabao Cup last midweek, Trossard would have missed the Leicester game in the Premier League instead.
This is not a point about the fairness or otherwise of the decision to send Trossard off at the Etihad, but whether his punishment should be served in a different competition, particularly one in which Arteta felt able to make eight changes to his starting XI. Bolton — currently 14th in League One — were still easily beaten 5-1.
It’s all a bit ludicrous, really. In the simplest terms, red cards in English football are served for the next game, or games, that the player is scheduled to play. So if someone is sent off in an FA Cup match and gets a one-game ban, but their next game is in the Premier League, they would miss the league game. And vice versa.
However, the same does not apply for suspensions from yellow cards. If a player accumulates five Premier League bookings, they must serve that suspension in the Premier League. Ditto in the cups; two yellows in the FA Cup lead to a one-game FA Cup suspension that cannot be served during a league game.
This has thrown up a few curious examples in recent years. Last season, Manchester United’s Amad was sent off after his late extra-time winner against Liverpool in the FA Cup quarter-finals, but was free to play in the semi-final against Coventry City because he served his suspension in the Premier League against Brentford in the interim.
The season before, Newcastle United goalkeeper Nick Pope missed the Carabao Cup final at Wembley because he had been sent off against Liverpool in the Premier League a week earlier.
Conversely, Bruno Guimaraes, who had been sent off for a straight red in Newcastle’s semi-final second leg win over Southampton, played in the final. He had served all three matches of his ban in the league, owing to there being almost a month between the semi and the final.
This doesn’t relate to the specifics of Guimaraes’ case, but if a player helps his team secure passage to a cup final via a late red for, say, deliberately fouling an opposition player through on goal, surely their punishment should be missing the final?
Likewise, if — a la Trossard — a player is sent off in what was the biggest Premier League match of the season so far, they are not exactly being adequately punished by being made to miss an easy Carabao Cup match against lower league opposition for which they may well have been rested anyway.
The rule carries over different seasons, too. Mateo Kovacic was sent off in the 2020 FA Cup final for Chelsea, leading to him being suspended for the first game of the following Premier League season.
It all feels very messy. There is no crossover with European competitions: suspensions earned in Champions League, Europa League or Conference League matches must be served in UEFA competitions, while FIFA are the same for their tournaments.
They do things differently in Europe. In Germany, bans are only served in the competition in which the player has earned their suspension. Ditto Italy and Spain. And the same applies across seasons: the last red card in a Copa del Rey final occurred in 2016 when Javier Mascherano was sent off during Barcelona’s 2-0 win over Sevilla. The next match he was suspended for was Barcelona’s next Copa del Rey game, in the last 32 against Hercules the following season.
Andres Iniesta also missed the Hercules match due to reaching the yellow card limit by picking one up in the final the previous May.
Real Madrid were thrown out of the Copa del Rey in 2015-16 for not knowing the rules; their winger Denis Cheryshev played and scored for Real against Cadiz in their opening cup match that season in November 2015, but Cheryshev had earned a third yellow of the competition when on loan at Villarreal the previous season, specifically in their semi-final defeat to Barcelona. He owed a one-match suspension, but Real didn’t realise and were expelled.
There are other strange quirks of this rule, such as Nottingham Forest’s Nikola Milenkovic being suspended for the first league game of this season because he had been sent off for Fiorentina in the Coppa Italia last April. He had played four times in Serie A after the red, but it came into force because he had moved to a new country.
Confusing? Yes.
But in England the added complication of red card suspensions allowed to be served in different competitions feels like something that could be made a lot simpler.
(Top photo: Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
