- A clue for journalists: we can tell you exactly what Arsenal are doing
- How Arsenal have avoided the yellow card revolution while others are getting hammered by refs
By Sir Hardly Anyone
Not surprisingly Everton fans are up in arms about their club’s ten-point deduction for financial misdealings. Obviously, I don’t have any proof but I rather suspect that the levy was set ahead of the findings on Manchester City not least so that the League can say, “Everton got ten points for x y z and Manchester City have done xyz multiplied by 20”. So not for the first time a precedent is established.
There is also the fact that the overseas-owned clubs refused to pass the resolution stopping loans between associated teams annoyed the remaining clubs, and I think there is a real feeling of the need to get things sorted out before half the clubs in the league are owned by oil-rich countries.
But of course, Everton fans are very annoyed – and quite honestly I’d be annoyed if Arsenal found themselves in this position. The only thing they are getting wrong, in my personal view, is the notion that somehow the League is out to get them – Everton – and that the League is corrupt. But no I think it is part of the League – some of the clubs with overseas owners – that is corrupt. Thankfully that does not seem to include Arsenal.
Still, we can contemplate what a 110 point deduction means. Relegation to the bottom tier I suppose, just as happened to Rangers in Scotland.
But other points begin to emerge. Like the fact that most of the UK newspapers are not digging into this issue, just as they don’t dig into the issue of referees and PGMO, despite all the evidence of bias toward home or away teams in referees’ figures.
If that is the case then that would suggest Manchester City have already got at the League’s enquiry team. They did after all say that they have “incontrovertible evidence” of their evidence, but then strangely they have not produced that in public.
No one much is following up on that, nor are they asking why Sky was so hesitant in not showing Everton protest banners. Presumably, there is an agreement with the League that they don’t show or play the sound of fan protests. Or maybe one of the Arab-funded teams got at them.
We’ve known that broadcasters tend to do that sort of thing however, ever since Arsenal won the League having had two points deducted for alleged outrages in the Manchester United during the season. The whole of the final game at Highbury was accompanied by the single song, over and over again, “You can stick your fucking two points up your arse.”
It really was sung all the way through, and yet one can hear the commentator saying “And the Arsenal fans are singing ‘We are the Champions'” (because Arsenal had already won the league by the time they took to the pitch). Besides that was a Liverpool chant and we never touched that.
But Sky Sports have made their point – they will not allow any Everton demonstrations of discontent to be shown or heard on their broadcasts. Welcome to sanitized football.
Likewise, we are not allowed to see any Everton protest banners. Are the broadcasters seriously trying to pretend there is no protest going on?
And of course, we still have all the Chelsea issues to be resolved after they reported themselves to the Premier League for financial indiscretions in the past.
But the fact is that having seemingly set up an agreement through which referees and the workings of the PGMO can never, ever, be held to account, the League has no problem insisting that broadcasters do their bidding. Indeed they got rid of one of their most regularly used commentators who persistently called out referees – Alan Green. He was excellent in his knowledge of the game, but those criticisms killed him off UK radio. He was also the only man to stand up to Ferguson at Manchester United and Allardyce (the man who lasted one match as England manager before being kicked out for taking… well I better not say) wherever he turned up.
Slowly there is an awareness growing that there is something seriously amiss with PGMO – with its abject secrecy. After all, if there was nothing wrong, why wouldn’t they behave as happens in Germany and have open discussions with the ref after a game? Why not employ enough referees so that no referee sees a Premier League team more than twice in a season?
We now have referees employed in Saudi Arabia to oversee games, flying back to England to oversee games involving clubs owned by Saudi Arabia. For now the “no reporting on referees” deal remains. But for how much longer?
Not sure if anyone paid attention to wolves games, but the officials confirming pretty quick after the game to O’Neill that they made 3 mistakes is something…..
It seems whenever anyone else moans about VAR the media back them up. When it’s us we get slaughtered.
More evidence of double standards from the media, and that’s without even mentioning the utter incompetence of the referees and VAR in the first place.
Arteta said embarrassing. It’s way beyond that now.
The Wolves match was another fine example of all that is wrong with PGMOL.
Consider the following:-
Newcastle vs. Arsenal – referee – Stuart Attwell.
Man. City vs. Liverpool – VAR – Stuart Attwell
Fulham vs. Wolves – VAR – Stuart Attwell
All 3 of these games managed to highlight the fact that Attwell (who was demoted from the PL Select group for over two-and-a-half years in 2012), has probably reached his level of incompetence twice, and nobody at PGMOL is competent enough to recognise it.
The Sky interviewer used an interesting phrase in the post-match interview with O’Neill – “…the refs want to get it right…”. I have seen no evidence to support that statement, and wonder whether PGMOL has some input into the wording used by these interviewers.
Great bit of digging Seismic re Attwell , he was also the referee when we lost to MC at home in April 2021 , 1-2 with us being denied a penalty when Ederson took out Odegaard , MC being awarded a penalty when the referee decided that Xhaka had pushed down Bernardo Silva who by the way was already falling and to top it all he couldn’t get his red card out quick enough to send off Gabriel , which was a soft decision . ATTWELL has a lot of history .
Attwell:-
Awarded the ghost goal to Reading in September 2008
On VAR at Everton on 6.12.21 when Tomiyasu’s head was raked
Referee at Arsenal v Man City in 2022 when he sent Gabriel off and failed to caution Rodrigo for a tackle from behind on Saka which would have resulted in a later caution to be his second. He subsequently scored a late winner
He was dropped by the Premier League for two and a half years.
His incompetence has no bounds.
His list of errors is breathtaking -I have just listed a few.
It is interesting to note he has not refereed a Premier match since the Newcastle debacle
When will the powers that be recognise what we all know?
Wolves fans can look forward to PGMOL making amends for these injustices in their next fixture.
Who is it against?
John
Yes we mentioned that last night
Mick seismic
Fantastic research lads.
Those incidents are absolutely damming, and if the media had any intention of highlighting and subsequently sorting out this charade they would jump all over those kind of things, but as it is Arsenal, they will not utter a word. And lets be clear about this, if you guys know this with some research, the media know it.
The difference is you/we/us want to highlight it, they don’t.
I absolutely detest the media because without a doubt, if THEY were fair, neutral and balanced, they could force this all to be sorted, but they are not.
The problem is they WANT this chaos as it enables manipulation of results. The problem is, as I said a couple of Months ago, the officials are so shite they cant even cheat properly any more!!
More scrutiny is needed. Of course we focus now on this new “suspicious” trend of our referees officiating in Saudi League matches and in PL matches involving Saudi-owned clubs. But last weekend, something else happened: In both matches involving Manchester clubs, the same ref was involved, once on the field in City-Liverpool and once as VAR in Everton-United. And that ref is Chris Kavanagh, who happens to be from Greater Manchester. How on earth is he even appointed for those games? And of course he found himself in the middle of a controversy because in Everton-Manchester the referee judged Martial to have dived and then booked him (and you can watch the action over and over: that was the correct decision). But Chris Kavanagh from Greater Manchester decided to overturn the decision and benefit Manchester United… Surprise!
Has anyone even questioned the PGMOL decision to appoint Kavanagh? No, because you cannot question the PGMOL tyrants.
Excellent point Fabs thank you