This will sound like a moan and it is in effect, but over the season Arsenal have been dealt a bad hand with referee decisions.
It's easy to say "Just get on with it" and I agree to a certain extent but a couple of comment's I received on an earlier article certainly gave me food for thought.
The comments were from an anonymous poster and Kalle. I hope they don't mind me using their comments.
"The lack of English players hurts Arsenal because the English refs will continually bone the club with bad calls because of it. it goes all the way back to Arsene's original team when only half his players were foreign. am i supposed to believe that the ref's don't hold the same xenophobic feelings that are constantly spouted by English managers, coaches, players and fans?"
"Mr Anonymous comment at 18:18 really scared me. I wanted to write a piece and found identical words of my thoughts. I do KNOW that not having English players hurt Arsenal in one way only. Ref Decisions.
I was laughing when I saw on MOTD that Manure conceded a penalty in EPL for the first time in a year.
Forget about that. I remember PV4 taking about leaving EPL for the same reason. The only way we can win seems to be by being 5x better than any other team. therefore we do doubles that year.
Anyway, another evidence of EPL referees is that they never do well in Euro and World Cup, neither in CL and UEFA Cup. Countries such as Sweden whose league is 40th in Europe produces far better referees than EPL. That tells you that we need to get professional referees from outside England to take the game forward."
I think they are both excellent comments. They both have great point's and I agree with them.
Do Arsenal have to perform better than anyone else to win thing's because we have more foreign players than any other club?
Do Arsenal get a raw deal from Premiership referee's?
The media certainly seem to take great delight in Arsenal failing. I wonder if that's because we have embarrassed them with a title challenge this season after being written off by them all?
Ref's are only human and can make mistakes just like you and I. I accept that, but is it more than that?
Are Premiership ref's taking too much notice of the media's anti-Arsenal propaganda and letting it affect the way that they take charge of Arsenal matches?
Keep it Goonerish......
25 comments:
Wrighty, since I am American and follow Arsenal from the States, perhaps I can offer a non-English perspective on the situation. Over here in the US, we get to watch a number of games with Sky commentators. If a game is not on Sky, we can go to a bar and watch the game on Setanta. We also get Sky Sports news televised over here, along with the Premiership Preview show, Premiership world, and The Premiership Review show. I also follow Arsenal news through NewsNow.
Based on my observations, I agree wholeheartedly that there's an anti-Arsenal bias that is pervasive in England.
When Wenger and Arsenal complain about a poor call, it's sour grapes. When SAF complains about a bad call the pundits swallow their tongue.
When Arsenal were drawing and losing games, and finally gave up first place, all the talk in the papers was that the squad crumbled under pressure, Wenger lost the plot, they are not good enough, this season is a failure, etc. What about ManU dropping points recently and now sitting in a points tie with Chelsea? WIll the papers say that ManU or Chelsea's seasons are a failure if they fail to pick up silverware despite outspending Arsenal almost ten fold?
Finally, can you imagine the string of poor decisions that effectively ended our premiership and CL runs happening to ManU or Chelsea? There would be talk of scandal and perhaps an investigation into referee match fixing.
People often say that Arsenal should win by two or three goals to negate poor decisions. But, on the top level where the difference between top teams is so little, the best team winning depends completely on each team being treated the same. Saying that Arsenal should win by a larger margin in each game is effectively admitting that there is a bias and nothing will be done about it.
There is no doubt that Arsenal have had a bum deal with the officials this season.
No matter what happens, IT DOES NOT EVEN ITSELF OUT!
Refs are cunts
Well said my fellow American Gooner.
Absolutely there is an anti-Arsenal agenda on the basis of our having a team of foreign players, I don't think there's any question about it. I think it's worse than it's ever been because there's only one English first teamer right now.
That's why I strongly believe that Wenger MUST include that inevitable bias in his plans for next season. He has to instill in the squad a ruthless efficiency in front of goal and an absolute take-no-prisoners strategy in defense. He has to instill in the squad a mindset that each game is a cup final and that every single second of every game is a do-or-die moment, until the referee finally blows his whistle. In other words, our players have to be almost superhuman in their concentration and focus.
This question is similar to asking 'is the pope catholic?' .. of course, ever since I became an arsenal fan in the very early days of the wenger years, this much has been glaringly obvious (especially to those of us abroad and thus insulated from the immediate unfairness and bias of the english press).
Major areas:
ref protection to bad tackles: for each red card that patrick vieara ever received, you can bet there must have been 2-4 different players of the opposition that had committed worse fouls than him in the same match. The refs' rule is: 'you have our permission to kick the shit out of them, and god help them if they dare try even a little tackle' ... so, we are the most fouled team in the land, and among the least offending teams, but we are at the top of the most booked team. So, you see, your article is aiming to debate the obvious.
important calls in matches:
there are just too many of these to flag individual instances. But surely, we lost this season in birmingham, at boro, boro at arsenal, and arsenal at chelsea. In each of these matches (go and watch them again) bad calls directly affected the outcome of the matches.
If even 20% of the significant (and in my opinion, deliberate) poor refereeing were re-dressed we woudl still be top of the league and would have wrapped up the title by now. Why do you think some of our players are thinking of leaving ? b/c wages ? or they hate arsenal ? No, top on the list is that they do not expect to win much with the current state of affairs .. especially were your performance is deliberately wiped out by some evil and xenophobic idiot in the wrong job ..
Now contrast our season with manu (especially) and chelsea .. in terms of poor refereeing or beneficiaries of significant bad refereeing. It becomes glaringly obviously that we were simply robbed this year by referees. The worst thing is that we were similarly robbed in the champions league.
So, when gooners have a moan at arsene for suqad lacking dept, I am bewildered that they are blind to what is clear to so many of us.
ac here
one thing i noticed at the chelski/united game on saturday is that after the game fergie raced onto the pitch to confront the ref and even worse he was seen stopping his players from shaking the refs hands yet sky never panned to this once you could see it in the background and it was reported in the sunday papers but sky never showed or discussed this now if that was wenger or gallas etc..you would have had 7 camera angles on it and keys saying arsenal are a disgrace etc.. and bans be handed out ytou see its not just the refs who are corrupt
EPL refs, and their bosses, are hypocrites and reflects in some way the obsolete views of hopefully a small portion of brits that england is still the good old GREAT britain... lol and wake up these people!
Thank you for raising this point.
I think it should be raised more often because it should be quite obvious and it does make it so much harder for arsenal to win anything.
When an incident involves arsenal it doesnt go away for years (eg, surrounding van nistelroy) but when its man utd like at the weekend, they wont say anything "it was just an emotional situation".
this goes way deeper than the foreigner thing, this is aNorth/South thing. GG's teams were also persecuted by the forces of darkness. Our best spell was when David Dein was chair of the FA. Mancsum were stating to lose their momentum so guess what, their man was elected chairman. Since then they have been given everything. Man for Man we are better than them but we have the FOD to contend with too. We were docked points at OT a few years back for a little fight. We were punished and lambasted for weeks after the rumpus u[p there a couple of years back. What happened last weekend. They assaulted every one at the home of the Chavs and I have heard nothing much at all. Hleb got busted by the Beeb for slapping last week. MOTD showed 2 minutes of the match and 2 minutes of the slap on Murty. Murty went down like a sack of shit. Cesc got clumped in the face at Derby and the commentators said he was putting it on. Let me hit the commentators teeth with my knuckle and see if he don't hurt. I have been moaning about the cheating for 20 years. I guess no team enters the Mancs area because they are so great at defending. 1 pen against them this year and it was at Chavski. 7 for them because their superstar likes taking a tumble.
EL Tel
The FA needs an enquiry just like the Italians did. GG got sacked for bungs Red Nose and co were also at it but till today have been unpunished. The reason I hate Manscum isn't jealousy its the cheating that hurts. Chavski the same they are so arrogant and refs shit themselves when they see the Russian KGB guarding their owner. Trust me I have seen the bodyguards while at Highbury.
What about the fact only arsenal players from the top 4 teams are capable of being labelled "divers".
Van nistellroy and now ronaldo were/are constant divers but no one says a thing!
Pires dived much less frequently, i can only remember him actually diving once, but he did go down easily smetimes; but he was labelled a diver. Eboue has now been labelled a severe diver and may as well start with a yellow card cos hes gna get one if he deserves it or not.
Then theres torres and even the great steven gerrard..
I guess drogba is an exception though, he has the label, and I would say hes about as bad as eboue
This season I gave up watching any other matches except Arsenal. It is so unbelievable what is going on today. When we got kicked off the park after first 20 mins up the in FA cup. Red nose proclaimed to the world that we were a dirty team. This is when it all went wrong. We got fuck all after this. Forces of Evil. If all other teams got together and told them to fuck off it might work but they have the whole of the North on their side. Most Managers up there have Mancscum connections, yet we have the same animosity towards us from other London teams.
Divers League Championship.
1. Drogshit.
2. The Winker.
3. Gerrard.
4. Joe Cole
5. Micky Roony
6.Torres.
7. Eboue.
8. Nani.
9. Keane
10. Babel.
I think the American follower nailed it pretty much on the head really. no need to say much more.
ALTHOUGH... it all does sound a little like sour grapes. We have had some tough calls go against us quite a few times, which makes you a little suspicious as to the motives of some of the refs. But given the amount of foreign players in the league, especially in the top 4, i cant say that its due to the amount of foreign players within our squad. But im stuck for a better suggestion at this point.
I think hleb vs c.ronaldo is a good examle of ref bias. Both players have amazing speed on the ball, which attracts some bad tackles and just down right rough challenges. And some are called, and some are ignored. BUT I put it to you that ronaldo has had double the fouls against him than our boy (at the moment) hleb. I haven't checked out the stats on that, and im not sure where i would, its just something that i have noticed through watching the league this year. For some reason, c.ronaldo seems to have some sort of protection from the referees.
that middlesborough game confirmed the bias towards arsenal.
its a dirty game. arsenal must be ruthless like chelsea; when their player got injured and we kicked it out they beat us by being ruthless.
we also ran out of players through injury. we played against 12 men. so we must improve if we want to win anything. this years team was good enough but key players went missing ie rosiky and v persie. so im confident. officials even in europe do not like arsenal. arsenal are near perfection and people dont like it. alot of people will not like what i say but the fact is that europe is racist to black players especially if they are not english. so when a team has alot of black players winning the league unbeaten then people higher have to intervene like banning foriegners.
I don't know the reason, but it surely seems to me that Manure, Chelski and Liverpool are treated differently than other teams - especially us. However, looking at the alternative table (http://www.rightresult.net/), we're still 2nd after Manure. I don't know how, because I remember only 1 game when we were lucky with the ref (at Everton), and at least 4 (Boro, Birmingham, Liverpool, Chelski) when the ref cost us valuable points...
Yes you are 100% right Wrighty. Pens against us, and not given when we are fouled. Wenger is not cracking up he is right.
IL-Gooner, that alternative table is based on what the majority of pundits say are wrong decisions and we all know that very few decisions that go against Arsenal are criticized or even stated as incorrect by the Manc biased media. We had a dreadful year last season for decisions that went against us but it didn't cost us as much because we were never going to win the league last year anyway. After last season I decided to make a note of all the decisions that go against us in future and this season makes grim reading.
Total of good goals and/or penalties that should have been awarded for us = 19
Opposition players that should have been sent off = 9
Opposition goals that shouldn't have been allowed = 10
Points swing that would have at least gone in our favour had these decisions been made correctly = 14.
The amount of decisions that went for us e.g. Adebayors hand ball at OT (which were minimal) have been taken into account in the points swingometer ;)
Regarding the Hleb ban of 3 matches for his slap against Reading and the perpetrator of the slap on Fabregas on Monday night - it seems that there is an FA ruling that no retrospective bans can be handed out to players without Andy Gray's say-so and we all know what AG thinks about Arsenal and Arsene Wenger.
P.S. I find it amazing that Setanta have been set-up in direct competition to Sky Sports but have just become like a baby brother, copying them completely in everything they do - even the bias.
Lol, you gooners are paranoid
stop looking for alterior reasons for your failures and look at the state of your side
Wenger policy on wages is admirable, but at the same time it is detrimental to the team. If Arsena had not fcked about and gone and got Ribery and Kompany in the summer I doubt this would even be a question.
cuntchops
You talk a lot of rubbish cuntchops, Arsenal get a much harder deal then every other team in the Premiership and possibly Europe.
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To 'anonymous' of 09.49am, 10may08 .. the guy who has compiled bad calls for and against us, I wish to congratulate you on doing this instead of just talking about it. This is a serious matter, and we should be prepared to perhaps run a website with this data (kept per season) .. perhaps even get video clips linked in backing each entry.
If you read this and are interested in discussing this further offline, please reply and then we could exchange details and see where we get with it.
Hope you respond ..
To 'anonymous' of 09.49am, 10may08 .. the guy who has compiled bad calls for and against us, I wish to congratulate you on doing this instead of just talking about it etc.
Yeah no problem, I've been going to Arsenal for 30 years but this is getting ridiculous now.
I'm quite prepared to discuss it further.
yeah it's all the refs/FA's fault you haven't won the league or anything for the last 5 seasons
you sad bastards
cuntchops
I often see people put in work to create compilations of players and seasons highlights. If anyone is up to it. I think it would be great to put together a compilation of all the poor calls that cost us points this season. Anyone up for it?
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