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By Tony Attwood
One of the points about Untold is that we do like to back up statements, where possible, with facts, and I think that maybe over the years we have been going, we have had a little influence on some other media in this regard. Unfortunately, what has also happened is that facts are now being at best “manipulated” and at worst made up to fit whatever anti-Arsenal copy the meida is wanting to put about that week.
Of late, we have had the statements on VAR mistakes, and how they have benefitted Arsenal (with the implied connivance of the VAR official), and I have mentioned this before, but it is such a blatant abuse of the facts, I think it needs returning to.
The essence of the story is that when there are VAR mistakes, they benefit Arsenal in a way that other clubs do not get a benefit. The implication clearly is that Arsenal won the league by cheating.
We all know that referees make mistakes, and although we’d like to think that VAR (in which the ref has the chance to look at a sequence of events several times) should not lead to the wrong decision being called, the media now suggests that, where Arsenal is concerned, that seems not always to be the truth.
But there are now stories circulating that some referees have on several occasions, given the wrong call after watching VAR. And Arsenal have benefitted three times from this.
Now to be fair, the articles on this don’t say it is only Arsenal that benefits, but Arsenal, being champions, are picked out for special attention.
But the big point about these pieces in the media and online is the lack of evidence. We generally don’t see the video in question, and we have no way of checking that it is Arsenal that benefited more than most others over such a mistake. Likewise, we are not given a chance to see how other clubs benefited from wrong VAR calls when playing against Arsenal. Or come to that, the number of off-sides that were missed during a game, or wrongly called.
In fact, it is just one attribute of football that is presented, without backup evidence, and without fulsome comparison, which always makes me suspicious.
But then even if we accepted that Arsenal had three goals allowed which they shuold not have got, we don’t know which games these were in, and so whether the goals affected Arsenal’s points tally. For example, in a game Arsenal won 2-0, the fact (if it were a fact) that one of Arsenal’s goals should not have been allowed is irrelevant. They still would have got the three points.
Indeed, since Arsenal won the league by seven points, all three of the errors alleged would have had to reduce Arsenal from three victories to three defeats for Arsenal to lose the title, and I can’t see how that can happen with just three errors.
But more than that, such statements about Arsenal benefiting from such errors and it being important can only be considered properly if we know how many times other clubs have benefited from such errors.
Now, there is, however, generally a clue when we get presented with this sort of information, which looks dramatic but actually would have no effect on results or league tables. And that is that it simply doesn’t give us any information on the outcome that we would need if we wanted to make a judgement.
The stories don’t say, “if VAR had been called correctly, Arsenal would not have won the league” – and that’s the clue, because given the way anti-Arsenal propaganda is written, any and every chance to knock Arsenal is brought to bear.
And if one wants to look a little bit further, one might also ask to see the evidence from the videos and the actual alleged error figures from other clubs, rather than just have a focus on Arsenal, who in this case are not even adjudged to be the main beneficiaries.
Because of this lack of evidence, I have no idea if Arsenal did benefit from faulty VAR calls, and if they did, did they benefit more than most other clubs? But I can be sure that if there was any evidence at all suggesting that Arsenal won the league only because of faulty VAR calls, that would have been over every newspaper long ago.
No, this and similar stories are summer fillers – ways of knocking Arsenal long after the season is over, and without any real risk of the club bothering to fight back. I mention it because it is part of a rather nasty trend of playing with ideas without proper evidence, and implying Arsenal cheats with the collusionn of referees. That has been the story for much of the last month or so. And it is a story lacking all evidence.
If you want to know more, you might care to try How Arsenal escaped red cards and penalties. But I do suggest you read with caution.
