Arsenal having Myles Lewis-Skelly sent off against West Ham United now means they have more red cards this Premier League season than Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City combined.
It was the second time Lewis-Skelly has seen red in a month, albeit Arsenal had the suspension for the first overturned on appeal. Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard and William Saliba are the others sent off this term.
All of those dismissals came in a run of six league games between late August and mid-October. The first came in the third match of the season when Rice earned a second yellow card for delaying the restart by nudging the ball away from Brighton and Hove Albion player Joel Veltman as they prepared to take a free-kick. Arsenal went on to draw that match 1-1 after leading at the time of the sending-off.
Less than a month later, in their second league game after the September international break, Arsenal went down to ten men seven minutes after Gabriel Magalhaes put the Gunners into a 2-1 lead over Manchester City. Trossard received a second booking in the eighth minute of first-half added-time for delaying the restart by kicking the ball away, with the match eventually ending in a 2-2 draw.
Then, within a month, Saliba saw red away to Bournemouth after VAR deemed the defender denied an obvious goal-scoring opportunity in a match they ultimately lost 2-0. The referee, Rob Jones, had initially shown a yellow card, but after VAR recommended an on-field review, he upgraded that to a red.
Arsenal then managed to go three months without receiving a red card before a Lewis-Skelly challenge on Wolverhampton Wanderers player Matt Doherty was deemed serious foul play. However, after the club appealed, an independent regulatory commission upheld their wrongful dismissal claim and removed the three-match suspension.
Then, during the West Ham match, much like the Saliba situation, VAR deemed Lewis-Skelly denied an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and recommended Craig Pawson review the challenge on a pitchside monitor. The referee, as Jones did, then upgraded the initial yellow shown to a red.
Five red cards is two more than any other Premier League team, with Ipswich Town, Southampton and West Ham having three. Aston Villa, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest and Wolves are next with two.
Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Man City, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur have just one sending-off. Leicester City are the real outlier, though, with no red cards despite receiving 62 yellows, more than all but Bournemouth (67), Chelsea (74) and Southampton (72).
