Well, that was anticlimactic. What was billed as a titanic clash between heavyweight contenders for the Prem title fizzled into a dour draw. Fair play to Newcastle, though. All they had to do as the visiting underdog was not lose, and not lose is what they did. Despite our keeping a mammoth 63% possession and creating any number of gilt-edged chances, we couldn’t penetrate this immovable object. In that sense, Newcastle came away the victors if not actually victorious, the draw doing more to validate their ascension than it did to coronate our campaign. Still, at the risk of sucking on some sour grapes, I have some griping to do, and griping is perhaps what I do best. Let’s get to it.

In the pre-match, I toyed with the idea that Saliba and Saka should try to get not just one but two yellow cards in order to serve a one-match suspension against Oxford United the FA Cup. Having been served four yellows already, a fifth would have seen them serve a suspension against Tottenham because the new rules state that yellow-card suspensions only apply to the competitions in which they’re earned. Thankfully, neither one saw yellow despite Madley showing us that particular card four times. It was a tetchy match, with tackles and fouls flying fast and furious, enough to make one wonder whether a more-experienced referee might have been better-suited to the situation.

In a match in which Nketiah was cautioned for this delicate toe-touch and grasp but this clattering wasn’t, one does have to wonder just what Madley was up to. In an ideal world, the referee is an objective arbiter whose decisions don’t affect the outcome of the match. 

Arteta, who to this point has been diplomatic in extremis, said that “there were two scandalous penalties”. The second was far milder than the first, and, occurring as it did in stoppage time, was far less likely to get called. In it, Xhaka drives into the box and tries to cross only to see the ball strike Jacob Murphy’s outstretched arm. Truth be told, it would have taken some courage for Madley to have awarded the penalty. That’s a game-changer, and Murphy’s arm was not in an unnatural position, outstretched though it may have been.

The real travesty occured a half-hour earlier during a set-piece that saw Dan Burns pull Gabriel Magalhães’s jersey hard enough to turn it a full 180 degrees, enough to maybe even cause Gabi to go to ground to attract Madley’s attention. Having already booked Ødegaard and Nketiah for much-milder shirt-tugs, one might have expected Madley to point to the spot. Alas, it was not to be. Ignoring the borderline handball in stoppage time is one thing; a referee doesn’t want to make such a marginal call at such a consequential moment. However, this uncalled foul happened with a more than 30 minutes to play, plenty of time for the call to submerge into the larger flow of the match and for Newcastle to fight back. It was the more-blatant foul, and Madley should have awarded it. He didn’t it.

One of the hallmarks of this squad’s progress under Arteta has been its ability to take referees and even opponents out of matches by scoring first and refusing to concede silly goals. Time and time again, under Emery and under Wenger, we were undone by those frailties. In this match, as important and as symbolic as it was, we really had to continue that trend by scoring early. We didn’t. We had chances, but we couldn’t find the back of the net. As a result, against a squad making a name for itself by keeping clean sheets, we forfeited our fate to an overmatched, inconsistent referee, and we’ll have to weather the consequences. It’s not Madley’s fault we had to share a point with Newcastle. It might have been nice for him to have awarded us a penalty on Burns’s attempt at undressing Magalhães, but one lesson we have to keep studying is the fact that we can’t count on the referees to give us the benefit of the doubt.

In the end, we did take the match to our visitors and came agonisingly close to piercing their defenses. Even if the result is less than satisfying, we at least emerge unscathed, no worse for wear, and still eight points clear atop the table. If we can get through other, similarly vital fixtures in this fashion, we’ll be just fine. It’s not as gratifying as getting all three points, but it might still be just enough. We shall see…