- Tackles, fouls, yellow cards. How refs treat Arsenal, Burnley, Tottenham, Man C.
- Arsenal v Burnley: Who will tackle, who will cheat, what will the referee do?
- Arsenal v Burnley: Arsenal are doing better than last season – just don’t tell the journalists
- Football at 3pm Saturday. That’s weird! It’s Arsenal v Burnley.
By Bulldog Drummond
Burnley’s possession statistic is as we have noted surprisingly high for such a lowly team in the league, being just over 50%, compared, say, to Crystal Palace who have 11 more points, and scored two more goals than Burnley and yet have a possession rate almost nine percent lower.
In terms of possession, Arsenal are at over 60% and in second place to Manchester City. But with 10.4 shots per game Burnley have only Sheffield United below them in the shots per game category. Arsenal on average get in four more shots per game. So once again we see possession is not everything in any regard.
But Burnley are 10th in the possession table above the likes of Brentford who are 11 places higher in the league – thus proving once again that possession might be nine-tenths of the law, but doesn’t have quite so much to do with winning football matches.
If they do play a possession game, Arsenal are likely to catch them on the break, with Martinelli in particular running rings around them.
Bukayo Saka it is suggested, should be fit to play but Takehiro Tomiyasu, Eddie Nketiah and Martin Odegaard are uncertain. Thomas Partey, Gabriel Jesus, Emile Smith Rowe and Jurrien Timber are certainly unavailable.
Of all these players only Eddie Nketiah reaches a 75% possibility of being available according to Premier League injuries. They put Odegaard, Saka and Tomiyasu on 50%.
That puts Arsenal on eight injuries in the table. Only Brentford with nine, Sheffield United and Tottenham Hotspur with 10, and Newcastle with 11, have more injuries. Bottom of the table, as they seemingly always are, is West Ham with one injury.
Mind you they have conceded twice as many goals as Arsenal, so that might explain it – they just step aside while the opposition move forward, for fear of being hurt.
Burnley are on five absences with Obafemi, Ameen Al-Dakhil, Lyle Foster, Aaron Ramsey all injured and Josh Cullen out with five yellow cards.
Up next: the referee, the fouls and the result.
Tossard as a false number 9 is his best position, and is a must start for Arsenal to get a run of winning games together. Arsenal must be unforgiving and start fast against Burnley. I would like to see some of the starlets from the academy on the bench to stop Arsenal getting stale.
At last we have an ally! The headline on the Graeme Souness column in the Daily Mail today reads “Get off Arteta’s back! I’d have benn boiling too. If you think it was a goal you just don’t know the game”. He, like myself, says Mikel should have waited before the interview – but then what he said needed saying. The fact that the utterly incompetent Attwell has no game this weekend says it all. We all know the goal would have been disallowed at the other end. Attwellin not sending Havertz off made it it impossible for the thug Guimaeres to be dismissed. Attwell obviously wanted to drive his car home!
The grouse shooting season began on 12th August. The kick Saka season resumed at Newcastle Saturday and continued Wednesday evening with the rotational fouling that Fabregas and Wilshire had to endure. Long gone are the days when Archie Macaulay than Alex Forbes were Jimmy Logie’s minders.
Forbes finished Normanton’s career after Normanton took liberties with Jimmy in February 1952.
Mick
That is good to hear from Souness if not a little surprising, but I’ll take it.
“If you think it was a goal you just don’t know the game”
That’s basically it. I know it’s a game of opinions and all that, but it is simply madness to say it wasn’t a foul. The TV evidence, the photos, clearly show 2 straight arms pushing in Gabriel’s back. It is a foul.
And this excuse that ‘there wasn’t enough to over rule the on field decision’, is all smoke and mirrors.
Firstly, there is.
Secondly, how do we know the referee even made a decision? He may not of seen it? View blocked? Poor angle? In which case he should of been asked to have another look, which is in any event the least that should of happened.
I said the other day that Arsenal should of done what Liverpool did and asked for the tape to see how they arrived at the decision because I’d be very interested to know what the referee said. Did he even see the incident clearly?
Nitram
F A Cup fourth round 2nd February 1952
Arsenal 4 Barnsley 0 – 69,466 Reg Lewis first half hat trick and Doug Lishman
Spurs 0 Newcasle United 3 -69,009
Barnsley had Sidney “Skinner” Normanton, a crude centre half, who fouled Jimmy Logie badly very early on. Alex Forbes bided his time and, as my late father recalled, later in the game in front of the west stand effectively finished Normanton’s career with a terrible tackle.
So at the two grounds with staggered kick offs of half an hour a total of 138,469 were in attendance
Nitram
Correction 138,475!
Mick . Coincidence or what ? Newcastle won that FA Cup final their player centred the ball after it had gone over the goal line and they scored and here we are 71 years later with all the tech and STILL no further forward .
Les
The “over the line” final was 1932 not 1952.
In 1952 we played most of the match with 10 men after Walley Barnes seriously damaged his knee.He was out of action for 18 months