The Athletic can moan about Arsenal but red card suspensions aren’t fair – get over it

Leandro Trossard’s red card has sparked a debate about the Premier League’s suspension rules, but most arguments seem to miss the point.

Leandro Trossard was sent off against Manchester City the weekend before last, receiving a second yellow card and a one-match ban.

Arsenal were forced to play with 10 men for over 45 minutes, ultimately conceding a late equaliser to the hosts.

Trossard then missed the following game against Bolton Wanderers through suspension, as per the rules, before returning against Leicester City. He had a significant impact in the Leicester game, scoring in the first half and forcing a late own goal in the second.

But Tim Spiers of The Athletic is among those to argue that Trossard shouldn’t have been playing the Leicester game.

According to Spiers, the rules that allow a player to serve a Premier League ban in the League Cup are “nonsensical” and “ludicrous”.

The journalist highlights that Trossard was sent off “in what was the biggest Premier League match of the season so far” and was thus not “adequately punished by being made to miss an easy Carabao Cup match”.

But Spiers misses the key point with these suspensions. They are never fair, at least not for any reason other than blind coincidence.

Occasionally, the punishment will happen to fit the crime. A player will be sent off against a title rival and miss a major derby game the following weekend, or vice versa.

But there’s no adjudication panel coming together to decide which fixture the player will miss, it’s just luck.

Suspensions often feel disproportionate in the other direction. Was Declan Rice kicking the ball a few yards against Brighton really enough to rule him out of the north London derby?

Those are just the rules. Sometimes you get lucky and miss a game against a relegation battler at home, sometimes you miss a title decider.

Changing the rules would lead to outcomes that feel similarly bizarre. Spiers himself highlights Mateo Kovacic’s red card in the FA Cup final in 2020, leading to him being suspended for the first game of the following Premier League season.

But the alternative there is that Kovacic misses the third round of the FA Cup in January 2021, in which Chelsea played Morecambe.

So Kovacic gets a red card in the biggest game of the cup season and his suspension is for the least important cup game of the next campaign. A game in which Kovacic ultimately was rested.

Kovacic was then able to return for the later and more difficult games in Chelsea’s run to the final.

It’s almost the exact problem that Spiers was complaining about in Trossard’s case. Should we have held off on Kovacic’s suspension until the 2021 final?

Imagine a different scenario, where Trossard plays in an “easy” FA Cup match against a lower-league side like Bolton and picks up a straight red card in the first minute. The rules are different this time, so he’s banned for three FA Cup games.

With 10 men, Arsenal lose the match. The next year, they draw Manchester City, and lose. The year after that, they draw Liverpool, and lose. The following year, they draw Spurs, and Trossard is still suspended despite the fact we’re now in January 2028.

Is that a fair punishment? Is Trossard’s hypothetical red card against Bolton in January 2025 a good reason to keep him out of three big-six clashes over the following three years?

Should he still be learning his lesson until as far in the future as 2029, when he’s 34 years old and finally allowed to return to the FA Cup?

Rodrigo Bentancur has been able to face Arsenal and Manchester United with Tottenham Hotspur over the past few weeks despite having been charged by the FA for misconduct, purely because he’s still appealing the charge.

Lucas Paqueta is facing a betting ban that could last years, but he continues to turn out for West Ham United on a weekly basis. If the ban comes through, you’d imagine the last club he plays against will feel hard done by that he wasn’t banned a week earlier.

Rice missed the north London derby whilst Trossard missed Bolton Wanderers for the same offence. Even if Trossard had missed Leicester City, those two suspensions would be far from equivalent.

That’s just how it is. Leicester did nothing to earn Trossard’s absence, and Arsenal did nothing to ensure Trossard would miss a particular game.

The suspensions fall where they fall, and any variation of the rules will lead to some outcomes that feel just and others that feel silly.