Arsenal have been charged with failing to ensure their players conducted themselves in an orderly fashion against Newcastle United by the FA following their last-minute penalty incident.
The Gunners' lead at the top of the Premier League table has been cut back down to five points following the 0-0 stalemate with the Magpies, who survived a spot-kick shout right at the death.
In the fifth minute of second-half injury time, Granit Xhaka's attempted cross into the box struck the arm of Jacob Murphy at close range, leading to Arsenal players to remonstrate with referee Andy Madley for a penalty.
However, Madley waved away the appeals, and VAR official Stuart Attwell upheld the decision, leaving Gunners players and Mikel Arteta seething with anger at the full-time whistle.
After Arsenal players swarmed Madley screaming for a spot kick, the FA have announced that the Premier League leaders have been hit with a charge for breaching FA Rule E20.1 and have until Tuesday to respond.
© Reuters
"Arsenal FC has been charged with a breach of FA Rule E20.1 following its Premier League match against Newcastle United on Tuesday 3 January 2023," a statement read.
"It's alleged that Arsenal FC failed to ensure its players conducted themselves in an orderly fashion during the 95th minute, and the club has until Tuesday 10 January to respond."
A report from Goal states that Arsenal are unlikely to appeal the charge and will seemingly accept any punishment that comes their way from the FA.
The Gunners were denied another penalty in the stalemate when Dan Burn appeared to grab a hold of Gabriel Magalhaes's shirt inside the area and haul the Brazilian defender to the ground.
Neither Madley nor Attwell saw anything wrong with that incident either, leading Gabriel to aim a thinly-veiled dig at the officials in a social media post.
🤦🏽♂️ pic.twitter.com/RJfKfjuobA
— Gabriel Magalhaes (@biel_m04) January 4, 2023
Arteta also criticised the "scandalous" decisions not to award his side a penalty for either incident at the Emirates, telling the media: "It's not about stronger, it's two penalties. That's very simple. I'm talking about what I've seen now. It's two scandalous penalties.
"We had a lot of situations around the box to do better and then those penalties. Both of them. It's not particular. It's a penalty or not a penalty and these are both penalties.
"I feel the team was on top, we were chasing it, we really wanted it. You could see the team was doing everything to win it. We lacked that in the final third and then we lacked the two big decisions obviously."
Arsenal return to competitive action on Monday night against Oxford United in the FA Cup before a North London derby away to Tottenham Hotspur on January 15.
Ben Knapton
