Arsenal under suspicion! FA investigates dubious yellow card betting by one of its players

The FA (The Football Association), the highest governing body of English football, has begun to look into the doubts surrounding the yellow card given to one of Arsenal’s players this season. The problem lies in the suspiciously high stakes on this occasion. It is not known which player is involved.

According to the British sports website The Athletic, the FA has warned the bookmakers as it has seen an unusual amount of money bet on the possibility that one of the players of the London team will see a yellow card during a match of this season’s Premier League.

According to a statement, the English Football Association is aware of the seriousness of the announcement and will investigate it with the utmost care. However, in view of the ongoing verification, it does not specify to which player the suspicion applies.

In any event, several sources in The Athletic’s betting industry agreed that the number and volume of bets relating to the award of a yellow card to a particular player in a particular match was indeed unusual.

This type of betting is referred to in English as “spot betting” and involves betting on smaller more detailed occasions such as the number of cards dealt, the number of corners played or some event in a particular minute, which can be very easily influenced by the referees and the players themselves.

Of course, this is exactly what the betting gangs sometimes profit from, and similar cases have been mentioned in connection with the Roman Berber case in the Czech Republic.

Mostly, however, betting fraud occurs at much lower levels, into which the public, journalists, betting companies and associations themselves do not have nearly as much insight. It is therefore surprising that there is any speculation about such things in the Premier League, considered the most watched competition in the world.

The most notorious case of fraud, albeit unsuccessful, from elite English football to date is the work of former Southampton player Matt Le Tissier. He admitted in his autobiographical book that he once tried to make a profit by betting on the time of the first free kick.

But when he actually tried to kick the ball out of the area 70 seconds into the game, he was unlucky. One of his teammates managed to intercept the ball just before the line. The police subsequently opened the case but decided that no further investigation was necessary.

On the other hand, defender Bradley Wood has already been punished in 2018, with a 6-year ban, when he deliberately got himself a yellow card in a Lincoln City cup match.

Source: The Athletic