Fan account immediately shot down after posting '40 mins' of Arsenal fouling goalkeepers

Arsenal bagged all three points against West Ham United on Sunday to go five points clear at the top of the Premier League - and a lot of rival fans were left very unhappy.

The Gunners have two matches left to play, one fewer than chasers Manchester City but well and truly in pole position as they chase a first league title since 2004 and prepare for a first Champions League final since 2006.

Premier League pundits and fans have been feverishly debating the rights and wrongs of Arsenal's latest win, which was all but confirmed by the ruling out of a stoppage-time equaliser from Hammers striker Callum Wilson.

Amid a penalty box full of fouls, Pablo's on Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya was deemed the most relevant by VAR Darren England. Wilson's goal was scrubbed out and Arsenal are one big step closer to becoming the champions.

Football being football, the discussion has been riddled with bias – it could never be any other way.

Former Arsenal defender Martin Keown and his fellow Gunners-leaning pundits were accused of a 'lack of objectivity' by former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan, and the talkSPORT regular acknowledged that objectivity among partisan football fans is a rare thing indeed.

Keown's suggestion was that the analysis of 'Manchester United pundits' was coloured by their 'convoluted' reasons for not wanting Arsenal to win the title, and Gunners fans were drawing the same conclusion when hearing the comments of Peter Schmeichel and Shay Given, two former Manchester City goalkeepers who both argued that Arsenal had got away with doing similar to goalkeepers when scoring goals this season.

The truth, of course, is that Keown, they, you, we and everybody else invested in the game will work hard to see what we want to see.

Some will even go out of their way to find evidence to back up their arguments.

Football bias is for everyone

Indeed, the owner of one Man City fan account on X, formerly Twitter, offered up a massive 35 seconds of proof that Arsenal engage in similar set piece shenanigans, somehow managing to take a statement of the obvious and make it less compelling by showing it.

@amjushere, who has seemingly built up a following of just under 6,000 people by making Man City their entire personality, responded to a challenge to 'show one clip of Arsenal doing this' by cobbling together a couple of examples, one of which was given as a foul and none of which were quite the same as the specific incident in question.

The fan account got the attention it was after. Or maybe not, as Arsenal fans queued up to point out the shortcomings of the attempted gotcha, not least the fact that his tweet promised a 40-minute video but delivered only a 35-second one.

"None of those show them draping an arm over the goalie's arms to keep them down," one contributor posted. "The one that was most obviously a foul lead to a goal kick so there was no reason for VAR to intervene. I agree referees need to do a better job with this but pretending these are the same is mad."

Another added: "No single clip in that video shows an Arsenal player holding the keeper's arms + shirt at the same time while the keeper has both hands on the ball. Not one. That's standard set-piece crowding that every team does. The specific thing being called out was two players physically restraining the keeper's arms while he was trying to claim it cleanly."

We could go on, but a third simply responded: "Thanks for proving that Arsenal don’t foul the keeper. Keep up the good work."