A five-person panel has gone back over the penalty Sunderland were given against Arsenal on 12 September and decided, unanimously, that it shouldn't have been awarded. The same panel decided VAR was right to leave it alone. Both findings, in the same breath.
David Raya saved it anyway. Enzo Le Fée took it on 56 minutes, Arsenal won 2-0, and nobody outside the club spent much of that week talking about it. Which is presumably why this lands as a curiosity rather than a grievance.
Still, you'd like someone to explain what "clear and obvious" means if a wrong penalty doesn't clear the bar. The panel's own reasoning is set out on The Athletic, and it's a decent illustration of a system designed to protect referees from each other rather than to get decisions right. Arsenal won the game. Somebody else won't.
Lee Carsley says Max Dowman's name comes up regularly when he and Thomas Tuchel talk squads, and that the timing has to be right. He's being careful in public, which is the correct posture. There's chatter about the 16-year-old training with the seniors at St George's Park this week.
A fortnight ago the talk was a loan to find him minutes. Now it's England. You can hold both ideas, but only one of them is about his development.
The U18s went into the break on three straight wins, tighter at the back under Josh Smith than they were last season. That's the sort of thing that only shows up in results months later.
Arsenal Women beat HB Køge 1-0 in their Champions League opener, Mariona Caldentey converting a penalty in the third minute of stoppage time. Renée Slegers made eight changes. The bigger problem is that it needed a 93rd-minute spot-kick at all — a deep block, again, and no obvious idea about how to break it. Chelsea away on Sunday won't sit in.
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