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Bukayo Saka has been integral to Arsenal’s title push and increasingly finds himself with unwanted, overly close attention from opponents, with many tackles resulting in fouls and many of those fouls failing to result in yellow cards. Are referees failing to protect Saka by not punishing some of the more robust challenges he has faced? JJ Bull analyses exactly that in this video.

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Music sourced from epidemicsound.com
Additional footage sourced from freestockfootagearchive.com

#arsenal #bukayosaka #premierleague

36 Comments

  1. next up: measuring emissions performance using only the data provided by automobile manufacturers.

    after that: war crime charges based on the honor system.

    quality journalism right here.

  2. Grealish in his final 2 seasons at Villa got really good at this. He had a reputation for going down easy, and that was well deserved. But it was because Dean Smith played him as the furthest up, most advanced player. Often this meant that Jack was isolated up top, and unlikely to create a chance. So, he would draw a foul and go down in order to get Villa up the pitch. But, when big chances are on, he stays on his feet. A good example of this is in the 7-2 win vs Liverpool (I'll take any excuse to bring it up) for our second and fifth goal, Fabinho fouls Grealish after he has released the ball both time. Once with a late dangling foot, once with a body check. But instead of leaning into them and then going down, Grealish avoids them and plays on, in order to take advantage of the chances. This is how he was the most creative player in the league that season – we used his as our sole focal point and he bought fouls when he was isolated, but created chances and stayed on his feet when we had the numbers forward to be dangerous.

  3. easy solution, if/when a player rides a foul… at the next stop in play, book the fouling player. how many times is play brought back when there's no clear advantage after a foul? Also why would a player go down if they have a chance to stay on their feet if they think that they won't get the freekick? like saka hardly ever does…

  4. Lmao. Big clubs get fewer fouls called on them than smaller clubs (Ex: Saliba should’ve been red carded in the first 10 minutes vs Wolves and wasn’t) So no, he’s not getting let down. If anything, he’s probably getting helped and peotected

  5. I love your videos but for me this is redundant. The fouls “look bad” because they are, but refs continue to not act. The stats relating to fouls against him are also irreverent because week in week out we see him fouled and the ref waves it on. And lastly we repeatedly see bad fouls given against him but no yellow. Prime example being the other day when Silva fouled him three times in the first half each of which should have been a yellow and none were given as such.

  6. I agree with your last comment about referees giving yellows when a player hasn't gone down but they don't have to stop play and do it right then. Referees have the ability to play advantage and then at the next break in play retro-actively award cautions and yellow cards. This would allow players to play and might reduce the number of fouling type behaviors and hopefully it would also reduce the Grealish and Zaha types as well.

  7. The context of this video I don’t really agree with because you are only looking at fouls given and not considering the fouls not given ,even if they were absolutely a foul,which is why exactly Arsenal is complaining. For Saka against Villa did the whole game limping , off a whack of a tackle from behind from Moreno that was not even given as a foul whereas anyone could tell its a foul. Just because he rides on fouls doesn’t mean he should be kicked around like that. It’s not about analyzing only given fouls, people get away with murder in the EPL, first minute or 90tg minute if its a yellow card offense give it . Another classic example how many times did Emi martinez waste time before he got booked 4 warns before a card , 5 warning before a card for Ederson the previous game . You don’t book them , He is going to do it over and over until you book him in the 70th minute and they sub him off to bring some one else to continue kicking players.

  8. Surely you should reward attacking players trying to ride challenges? that's helping the game be more physical in itself and also if they ride the first attempt at the foul and then keep getting fouled when the defensive structure is broken, it's tactical and deliberate and deserving of a yellow the same way stopping a counter attack is. If a defender fouls someone and they keep going and the defender does it repeatedly until it's given that's multiple times the player could get injured for 1 foul. They should be way harsher on the tactical and deliberate fouling IMO

  9. I think it racism. Grealish is white and gets awarded frees, all the time. Saka is black and therefore is supposed to accept the kicking. The Bernardo Silva examples are acprome example, small white guy getting away with kicking the bug black player. If Silva was kicking Grealish or Kane , he would get a yellow card.

  10. I just remember. Didn't they make fun of us for singing North London Forever? I guess they finally manage to find a more subtle way to push their anti-Arsenal agenda.

  11. If a player were to ' foul ' Saka a few times, the referee could still allow play to go on each time, but could book a player after the few foul attempts for 'repeated fouling' presumably ?

  12. Tifo got this one wrong. I’m quite impressed by a comment section which is actually challenging the view pushed by Tifo, usually you just see a bunch of people begging it .

  13. Pulisic vs Porto in the CL constantly being kicked and grabbed was comical. Now that was some extreme fouling before any free kicks were given…

  14. This is surprisingly poor analysis from you guys. As everyone else has pointed out, you're basing your entire video on the amount of fouls recorded, whereas the problem is that lots of fouls are completely ignored by referees.

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