FA investigating Arsenal's Xhaka's yellow card against Leeds after suspicious betting patterns were reported

The FA are investigating a yellow card received by an Arsenal player earlier this season, per multiple outlets with The Athletic breaking the story. The match in question, although not confirmed, seems to be Arsenal’s 4-1 win over leeds United on Dec 18th. Andre Marriner was the referee.

Once the match but over, bookmakers alerted the association to uncommon amounts placed on an Arsenal player to be booked. The yellow card in question appears to be Granit Xhaka’s 88th minute caution for time-wasting.

65K matched on Xhaka to be carded. Matched on betfair at 2.56 about 10 mins to go. For conetext most books we’re about 2.88 PREMATCH. Very strange. Anyone know what that’s about? pic.twitter.com/FQRco2Atwe

— FoG (@FoG_BLoG) December 18, 2021

Earlier within the match, Xhaka wasn’t booked for a clumsy (and some may say nasty) tackle on Raphina that I don’t suppose we’d have had a lot of grounds to complain about had he seen a straight red.

A FA official said, “The FA is attentive to the matter in question and is looking into it.” ESPN UK reports that right now, the inquiry is targeted on the gambling patterns themselves and not any individual player’s conduct and that it’s a preliminary inquiry rather than a proper investigation at this stage. it’s not clear however the referee factors in, either. Per The Guardian, Arsenal declined to comment.

However, there are previous instances of it occurring in English football.

Following his retirement, former England international Matt le Tissier admitted that he had colluded with friends to back the temporal order of the first throw-in during a match he contend for Southampton against Wimbledon in 1995.

In his autobiography, le Tissier aforementioned he had tried to “make many quid” by trying to kick the ball out of play, as he looked to profit on a bet for the first throw in to occur in the gap minute of the match.

However, the plan failed when a team-mate stopped the ball from going out of play.

The matter was brought up with Hampshire Police however an investigation wasn’t launched because the force determined it “would not be within the public interest and (did) not represent applicable use of police resources”.

Meanwhile, in 2018 former Lincoln city player Bradley Wood was banned by the fa for 6 years for telling friends to back him being booked in fa Cup matches against Ipswich and Burnley.