Arsenal fans left furious as Liverpool star avoids red card after copying Declan Rice
Arsenal fans have hit out on social media after Dominik Szoboszlai escaped a red card for an identical incident to the one that saw Declan Rice sent off against Brighton.
Rice, 25, will miss Sunday’s pivotal North London derby at Tottenham after he was shown a second yellow card in the 1-1 draw against Brighton prior to the international break for kicking the ball away.
The England international was shown a card for delaying a restart – and a similar incident occurred during Liverpool’s 1-0 defeat against Nottingham Forest involving Szoboszlai.
He was also on a yellow card when he booted the ball away in frustration after fouling Callum Hudson-Odoi. However, the Hungary international was not shown a second yellow by referee Michael Oliver.
Arsenal fans were left stunned after watching the incident and quickly took to social media to pass their verdict. One fan wrote: “No red card for Szoboszlai there?! He booted the ball after the whistle was blown. Guess it’s only an Arsenal thing.”
Others took the corruption route, saying: “Double standards… They don’t want Arsenal to win the league,” with another adding: “Like I said they’re trying everything to stop us from winning the league. This league is corrupted.”
Liverpool had won all three of Arne Slot‘s first matches at the helm – but the Dutchman rejected claims that the international break was behind their under par performance, even though several of the Reds’ key players featured for their respective countries last week.
He said post-match: “It’s always difficult but I don’t think [the break] had anything to do with it. Players came back strong and I saw today a team that wanted to fight until the end. That wasn’t to do with energy. We simply had the ball a lot we had to create from ball possession.
“If you look at the goals we scored until now, we scored quite a few from transition moments from winning the ball back but the other team (Forest) played over our press a lot with a lot of long balls. We mostly got the ball in our last line.
“It wasn’t good enough today because too many individual performances in ball possession were not up to the standards that I’m used to from these players.”
