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FA Looking At Suspicious Arsenal Yellow Card Amid Betting Concerns; Fans Believe They Found The Culprit

The English Football Association (FA) announced it’s looking into suspected abnormal betting patterns involving an Arsenal player during the 2021-22 Premier League season.

The name of the player hasn’t been released publicly, but that hasn’t stopped internet sleuths from suspecting this Granit Xhaka yellow card vs. Leeds United to be the moment in question.

Xhaka Yellow Card Vs. Leeds

The suspicion at hand is what is known as spot betting or spot fixing. An average person can’t go through a single commercial break without a sports betting ad being shown. The growth of the market means the smallest moments such as corner kicks, coin tosses and players receiving yellow cards can be bet on nowadays.

Spot fixing is when a player, referee or member involved in a game has knowledge of a bet and purposely influences a specific aspect or moment of the game in favor of that bet without changing the final outcome. A player purposely kicking the ball out for a throw-in or getting a yellow card are examples of this illegal practice.

Fans suspect an unusually high bet on Xhaka receiving a yellow card paired with his bizarre time-wasting up three goals is what the FA is looking into.

This story of the FA investigating an unnamed Arsenal player was first reported by The Athletic. 

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