The Premier League’s Key Match Incidents (KMI) panel has unanimously ruled that Sunderland should never have been awarded a penalty during their 2-0 defeat to Arsenal on September 12 — but has also backed VAR’s decision not to intervene and overturn the call on the pitch.
The Incident: Konsa’s Challenge on Ballard
The controversy centers on a 54th-minute coming-together between Sunderland’s Dan Ballard and Arsenal defender Ezri Konsa inside the box. Referee John Brooks pointed to the spot, judging Konsa to have fouled Ballard during a grapple — a decision Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta immediately called “unacceptable.”
David Raya ensured the call didn’t cost Arsenal, saving Enzo Le Fée’s resulting spot-kick with the score still goalless. Arsenal went on to win the match 2-0, with Bukayo Saka converting a stoppage-time penalty to seal the result.
What the Panel Actually Decided
The five-member KMI panel voted 5-0 that awarding the penalty was the wrong call. In its official statement, the Premier League explained the reasoning:
“The panel unanimously felt that the referee’s call of a penalty for a holding offence was incorrect. Although it was a very untidy challenge in which Konsa initially had arms around Ballard, Ballard engages in a holding action which pulls Konsa onto him so they both fall to the floor.”
That’s a clean, unanimous verdict on the penalty itself. But the panel split on a separate question — whether the error was severe enough that VAR should have stepped in and recommended an on-field review. There, the panel voted 3-2 in favor of VAR’s decision not to intervene, judging that the incident didn’t clear the high bar the Premier League sets for overturning on-field calls.
In practice, that means two things are simultaneously true: Arsenal were wrongly penalized, and VAR official Stuart Attwell was not considered to have made an error by letting the decision stand.
Every Other Major Call Was Backed
Beyond the penalty, the panel reviewed several other flashpoints from the match and supported the officials on each one:
- Arsenal’s penalty for a foul on Bukayo Saka, and the red card that followed it, were both backed unanimously.
- Jurrien Timber’s disallowed goal for offside was ruled the correct call.
- A shout for a second Sunderland penalty, for an alleged foul by Christos Tzolis on Nordi Mukiele, was unanimously rejected. The panel’s statement read: “The referee’s call of no penalty for a challenge by Tzolis on Mukiele was supported as correct with the contact below the threshold for a foul.”
- A potential foul by Brian Brobbey on Riccardo Calafiori was the closest other call of the game, with the panel backing the no-penalty decision 4-1. The dissenting vote felt it should have been given as a penalty and led to a VAR review.
Across the whole match, the Konsa-Ballard penalty stands as the only decision every member of the panel agreed was wrong.
Why This Matters for Arsenal
The verdict gives official backing to Arteta’s on-the-day complaints, even though it arrives too late to change anything about the result. It also continues a pattern of increased scrutiny on Arsenal’s fixtures from the KMI panel this season — the club was involved in another reviewed incident earlier this month, when the panel unanimously supported the decision not to send off Gabriel in Arsenal’s match against Chelsea.
This time, though, the panel’s findings side with Arsenal rather than the match officials, confirming that a genuine officiating error worked against them at the Stadium of Light — even if the process designed to catch such errors in real time wasn’t found to have failed as well.
