Arsenal v West Brom Thursday 21 April 2016 – The Match Officials

by Andrew Crawshaw

Following the review of the West Ham Game here is the updated Table of Shame and yes the wrong Important Decisions against Arsenal have now reached 100 and the cost in points is 27

Table of Shame

Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents
2nd Yellow Cards 1 44
Red Cards 2 16
Penalties 3 29
Goals 1 11
Total 7 100
Possible Cost in Points 0 27

The referee Craig Pawson never had a grip of this match once he only brandished a yellow card for Carroll for his scything challenge on Kescielny in the fourth minute.  That decision affected the whole game and without him on the pitch West Ham would certainly have not scored any of their three goals – they couldn’t as Carroll got every one of them.  I’m not going to go over the other wrong decisions because after the first one none actually mattered.

With a score of 42%, Pawson gains a second place on a revised Wall of Shame

Wall of Shame

Ref Game Weighted Score Bias against (h/a) Link to Ref Review
Craig Pawson Stoke v Arsenal 34 5/95 Stoke v Arsenal
Lee Mason Arsenal v Southampton 34 80/20 Arsenal v Southampton
Robert Madley Arsenal v Swansea 38 93/7 Arsenal – Swansea
Mike Dean Chelsea v Arsenal 41 5/95 Chelsea – Arsenal
Martin Atkinson Arsenal v Spurs 41 82/18 Arsenal – Tottenham
Craig Pawson West Ham v Arsenal 42 23/77
Mark Clattenburg West Brom v Arsenal 42 9/91 West Brom v Arsenal
Mark Clattenburg Everton Arsenal 43 6/94 Everton v Arsenal
Anthony Taylor Arsenal v Newcastle 48 9/91 Arsenal – Newcastle
Jonathan Moss Southampton v Arsenal 49 22/78 Southampton v Arsenal

On to Thursday and our officials are :-

  • Referee – Jonathan Moss
  • Assistants – A Halliday and S Bennett
  • Fourth Official – M Jones

This Season this will be Mr Moss’ fourth Arsenal game, and the first for some time.  His previous three games were getting worse every game, I just hope that is a trend that will rapidly reverse.

Ref Review Arsenal – Stoke

We started with a home win, 71% overall, bias 100/0 and two wrong Important Decisions (second Yellow Cards, Red Cards, Penalties and Goals) both relating to one incident in Min 90+2 when Pieters should have seen Red and a penalty awarded to Arsenal for a deliberate foul on Giroud (points won by then so it didn’t cost us).

Ref Review : Norwich – Arsenal – these acts of thuggery must be stopped

This one was a one-all draw.  57% Overall rating, bias against the two teams of 8/92 and three wrong Important Decisions, all sending off offences for Norwich players.  Min 40 for Bennett pushing an airborne Sanchez into a camera pit, Min 57 O’Neill should have a second yellow, and Min 90+1 O’Neill again for another foul on Giroud.  This was matchweek 14 on November29th and possibly when our season really started to go to pieces.  Two points lost to the PGMO.

Ref Review : Southampton – Arsenal

This was the 4 – 0 loss.  49% overall and an entry on the Wall of Shame.  Bias 22/78 and six wrong Important Decisions.  Southampton’s goals in Minute 19 (offside), Min 54 (foul by Long on Kos and Min69 (corner wrongly given to Southampton instead of goal kick).  Min 49 Koscielny should have been sent off for a second bookable offence, Min 73 Wanyama should have had a straight red for attempted assault on Ramsey’s groin and Min 75 Wanyama should have had a second yellow card for persistent fouling.  Southampton’s fourth goal was OK and we should have been down to ten men so I haven’t counted any points lost but an appalling example of refereeing.

For West Brom it will also be the fourth appearance, so far he has officiated:-

Crystal Palace v West Brom – 3 Oct 2015 (2 – 0)

West Brom v Spurs – 5 Dec 2015 (1 – 1)

West Brom v Palace – 27 Feb 2016 (3 – 2)

Last Season 2014-15 for Arsenal

The Untold Referee review: Arsenal – Crystal Palace

81% overall, bias against the two teams 100/0 and three wrong Important Decisions,  Min8 Ramsey pushed in the penalty area, Min64  Chamakh should have had a second yellow card rather than a talking to and Min 72 Hangerland pulled Giroud to the ground by his neck in the penalty area.  Again we won so no points cost

REF REVIEW Arsenal – Stoke

72% overall, bias against the two teams 90/10 and two wrong Important Decisions.  In Min10 Arnautovic pushed Debuchy off the pitch resulting in an initial three month injury and effectively ending his Arsenal career.  We won the game so no points lost but a big cost to the club and player.

Going back one more year there are no Referee Reviews but these were the Arsenal games :-

2013-14

Arsenal v Cardiff – 1 Jan 2014 (2 – 0)

Arsenal v Crystal Palace – 2 Feb 2014 (2 – 0)

Hull v Arsenal – 20 April 2014 (0 – 3)

Summary

  1. In my last referee review I wrote that I believed the refereeing after the Palace game would revert to the merely bad rather than the appalling once Spurs had a sufficient advantage to make us catching them highly unlikely.  With the appointment of Mike Dean for the Sunderland game on Sunday I now think that statement was overly optimistic.  I now think that ‘the powers that be’ are determined that we will end up in sixth place at best and if they can engineer either Southampton or Liverpool above us they will.
  2. So far we have had 100 wrong Important Decisions against us.  That is an absolutely unbelievable number and way beyond anything that could happen at random.
  3. Mr Moss is not the greatest of referees and got a lot of stick for his handling of the Leicester game at the weekend.  He is most unlikely to make any mistakes for his masters on Thursday.  We will be screwed.
  4. He allows assaults on our players to go unpunished, don’t be surprised if we see a stretcher probably with Özil on it.
  5. West Brom will park the bus and foul and wrestle us in their area with impunity however, unless they actually turn up with machetes we won’t get a penalty.
  6. West Brom will be physical and look to hit us on the break, they are likely to be aided by a referee with an educated blind eye and one able to tilt the pitch as required.
  7. It’s going to be a long tough game.

COYG

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23 Replies to “Arsenal v West Brom Thursday 21 April 2016 – The Match Officials”

  1. Sorry folks no such thing as officials. The match fixers aka ‘Three Blind Mice & Mother Goose’.

  2. dont be too harsh on them.
    English refs are some of the most intelligent refs and do thdit jobs very professionaly.
    I like oliver friend clattenburg and pawson.

    What we need is a new manager a new medical staff a new chief of transfers and 8 new players

  3. Arwar – do you lead your whole life wilfully blind of clear evidence? Good luck with that – you’ll need it.

  4. arwar
    April 20, 2016 at 8:04 pm

    You forgot to mention: ‘and change the supporters who get behind the team to ones like you.’

  5. Arwar what you need is a new club because there is very very little about Arsenal you like maybe join the PGMO

  6. Just seen the images of Origi his injury.
    I have been calling for red cards for these kind of tackles for years now on this blog. Stamping down on someones ankle or foot is extremely dangerous and can cause serious injuries. For now it seems that only when broken limbs are on display that refs in the PL give red cards for this. In most other leagues they give the red card regardless if the is a serious injury. As it should be. If the foul CAN cause serious injury it should be a red card given. Sadly in some (too many) instances the refs even don’t give fouls for this when a player is not injured.

  7. Aaarwar is back with his innane and ignorant comments. My guess isthat english is his third language behind whatever and aaa speak. Anyway, don’t feedthe trollsand they die off sooner or later!

  8. wish the fans in the ground would do what they did to Atkinson in the Leicester game more often.
    Yes Pete, FiF has constantly mentioned Moss, his agent friend Colqhoun and West Brom in the same sentence, though at times, they have claimed Moss is lenient on Arsenal. Have a hunch he wont be this evening.
    Maybe the PGMOL/media along with the AAA sense an opportunity to rid the league of Wenger….whatever happens this evening, or this season, that is not going to happen until the end on his contract at least

  9. Walter

    Didn’t watch last night so have only seen a couple of pictures of that challenge. Thought immediately of Mcnair on Wilshere.

    I’m guessing from the still that it didn’t happen at a lot of pace. Also looks like Mori can’t be generating as much force as Mcnair did.

    Still pisses me off so much that one. I think it’s the real barometer of where we are. Wilshere is undoubtedly one of the most talented players England has produced in some time. Normally that transmits itself to respect from players, refs, media,etc.

    It counted for absolutely nothing for us, though.

    McNair, and Dean himself, were let off scott free for a dangerous and damaging, reckless and deliberate foul.

    Glad Funes Mori got his deserved red, but the situation for us seems to be that there needs to be a break before a red will be shown.

  10. How does this cost us 27 points? This is far too simplistic. And it means nothing unless you monitor every single game, not just ours. It’s all very well judging ref’s with the use of tv reruns from your armchair but it shows no comprehension of what the ref has to deal with in the actual game. One wonders if you’d do any better if you were the ref.

    Do you seriously believe we’ve played well enough to have 87pts instead of 60. I don’t think we’re watching the same team.

    Someone on here claimed we would have beaten Liverpool if Ramsey’s goal had stood but conveniently forgets that he scored in about the 10th minute and there was another 80 minutes to play, in which time Liverpool could have equalized.

    Kudos though for investing so much time in this.

    Video technology is definitely required, that I do concede.

  11. Will be at the game tonight. Expect same PGMO cheating. The Origi incident last night is the responsibility of poor refereeing. It encourages ‘northern robust contact’ aka leg breaking tackles as well as choke holds particularly against Arsenal.

    Just read the BBC had a Ladbrokes article referring to a £3 million liability if Leicester win the League. That must mean several other bookmakers have similar liability. I hope they all withold payment pending fraud squad investigation that the bookmakers should instigate.

  12. The tackle on Origi is not dissimilar to the one on Jack Wilshere by the ‘Man U not that kind of a boy’. Note the media response of each.

  13. Yellow Canary,
    we tried to cover all matches one season and used referee reviewers who didn’t support Arsenal in our team, but still people dismissed it.
    And in that season we found the biggest bias against Arsenal than in the seasons before. I do think this season is worse.

  14. Rich,

    The McNair challenge on Jack was reported as being all his own fault for running with the ball and not releasing it sooner. I have even seen so called Arsenal fans repeating the opinion on blogs and social media. Ridiculous

  15. Eurosport barely mentions Funes Mori’s tackle, and their formulation about Origi is that “he was stretchered off”. Nothing more. It’s like a player being carried off the field as a result of an injury is something normal. No word about Origi’s predicted absence, hopefully he’s back sooner rather than later. This stone age mentality has to stop.

  16. There must be a severe shortage of referees as we have Moss tonight, Dean (again?) on Sunday, and Mike Jones if 4th official for both games.

    FFS!

  17. @Walter, I don’t think there’s bias. I can hazard why we get tackled more because we are possession-based team. Very few teams linger on the ball like we do or play so many passes hence we get tackled more. Refs very rarely give yellow cards for every tackle despite the fact that they probably should in many cases. I went to see the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final and the amount of tackles, some quite harsh, Oxford suffered at the dubious feet of Barnsley players in the first half hour was in the region of double figures and yet not one card was shown. In fact a card wasn’t shown until about ten minutes from the end of the game. And Oxford played a similar sort of style to Arsenal’s.

    Back to these so called 27 points we’ve lost. If that was the case we’d had to have won 29 games and lost 4 with 0 draws. Or perhaps 28 wins, 3 draws and 2 defeats seems more realistic. 27 wins, 6 draws and 0 defeats, no too far fetched seeing as we were completely dismantled at Southampton and barely turned up at OT. I actually can’t tally any of those stats with the team I’ve seen this season. And if we did win our remaining 5 games with these 87 points we’d end up with 102 points which no team has ever achieved.

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