Before we get to Arsenal we might note that this is a fun time for Manchester United, who announced £113.2m net loss in their latest accounts, making this the fifth year running that they have made a loss. With the Profitability and sustainability rules allowing a £105m loss over a three-year period, Manchester United management said the only thing they could say: that they are certain they are compliant.
(It would have been very amusing if they had said, “we’ve obviously had a cock up on the money front and have sacked our accountants,” but that was never likely. P&S enquiries await)..
Despite this being the fifth straight year of losses the media hardly raised a metaphorical eyebrow. There was just an acceptance of the Man U statement that all is well. It was indeed, ever thus.
Meanwhile the Premier League’s so-called “independent key match incidents panel” has unanimously agreed that Referee Kavanagh was right to send off Declan Rice against Brighton.
Indeed., according to Sky, “82 per cent of refereeing decisions were correct” prior to VAR. Now “since VAR was introduced, 96 per cent of decisions are correct.”
And that’s funny because prior to VAR I can’t recall any newspaper announcing that 18% of all referee decisions were wrong. I must have missed that.
The equivalent of this latest statement would be me saying that 96% of articles on Untold Arsenal are accurate in every respect. Maybe they are, but since I run Untold Arsenal you might be entitled to raise that metaphorical eyebrow. Unless someone else who was utterly independent of Untold in particular and football blogging in general, came along and assiduously checked the articles, you would be entitled to have some doubt.
But the media never doubts PGMO even when they say the “Arsenal shirt ‘too white’ for north London derby.” Even we were hardly surprised. It is after all, what PGMO do.
Meanwhile we do know for sure that Martin Ødegaard will miss the game, Merino is out for another couple of months and of course thanks to PGMO, Rice is suspended.
So now after lots of praise for Arteta’s summer transfer strategy, it is knocking time because of an alleged lack of personnel. Yet Thomas Partey and Jorginho are both available to play central midfield (although I don’t think they’ve played those positions together before).
Still, at least those who spent last season demanding that Arteta be sacked for wasting all the transfer funds on Kai Havertz, are now hiding in bunkers. And it is possible to take Havertz back to midfield, where he played most of the time for Arsenal last season. Although his 11 goals and seven assists since he moved up front suggest he ought to stay there.
Or of course he could start in midfield and then move up front if Tottenham take the lead, or indeed simply move forward from time to time to take the Tottenham defence by surprise.
However, Tottenham have scored six so far this season, one more than Arsenal and conceded three (two more than Arsenal). But if we take last season’s figures for Tottenham at home and Arsenal away we can see that Arsenal were much more effective in goal scoring terms, although the points total is close.
| 6 |
Tottenham Hotspur home |
19 |
13 |
0 |
6 |
38 |
27 |
11 |
39 |
| 2 |
Arsenal away |
19 |
13 |
3 |
3 |
43 |
13 |
30 |
42 |
But what we should particularly note is that Tottenham’s defence at home last season was not that good – worse in fact than the likes of Everton, Fulham and Chelsea and only just matching the mighty Crystal Palace.
And there is one other point on this, for although Tottenham will receive the Arsenal line up one hour before kick off, that will just be a list of names, and they will have to guess who is going to play where. They won’t know if Havertz is to start in midfield and then move forward if Tottenham take the lead and that uncertainty will not only give Arsenal a greater chance of scoring but also cause Tottenham to do a quick re-think.
Arteta has extended his contract for 3 years!! Good boost for the team!
I wouldn’ t complain to a midfield of Partey , Jourginho and Timbre or Trassoud .
The Premier League has changed its policy regarding team sheets for this season. They must be handed in 75 minutes before kick-off.
I seem to remember that the Premier League were claiming that 97-98% of decisions were correct before VAR. If they are now only 96%, I wonder what could be the cause of the decline.
From the games I’ve seen so far this season, referees and VAR seem to getting at least 3 MAJOR decisions wrong in each match.
seismic
“From the games I’ve seen so far this season, referees and VAR seem to getting at least 3 MAJOR decisions wrong in each match”
I cannot say I’ve watched the games closely enough to know whether that is true or not but given what I have seen, especially of course with regards to Arsenal, I have no doubt that your observations are pretty accurate.
Except me, you, Tony and all of us at Untold Arsenal are obviously mistaken, because as I have already pointed out elsewhere, according to the KMI panel:
“Of the 23 on-field incidents looked into from the third weekend of the Premier League of the season, only one was deemed to be incorrect”.
And read this and weep:
“So far this season there has been little real controversy in the Premier League, with only one VAR decision ruled to be incorrect…….While there have been no other VAR errors….”
I mean you have to be insane to even think that, let alone state it publicly.
But it just shows how arrogant and deluded these people are, but perhaps more importantly it shows how they simply do not care how they are actually perceived.
I find it incredible to believe that any game I have watched in the last few seasons in Europe has anywhere near 90% accuracy from the officials. I may be nit picking but most of the leagues I watch have at least 5 to 10 errors per half. In EURO 24 I watched perhaps a few minutes of some matches – every time I watched for a short while there was a glaring error. One example was Cristiano Ronaldo in Georgia v Portugal where he pointed out the ref that he had his shirt pulled – clearly visible on the replay – VAR completely ignored this. The ref then booked CR – he should have given Portugal a penalty! Funny how VAR did not intervene!
I do not watch the EPL, and haven’t done for the last few years, as the PIGMOB are probably the worst refereeing body I have ever seen. It is just so biased as to make the games unwatchable.
La Liga is just as bad – although to give then credit Spanish fans say that there is no corruption just totally incompetent officials.
Every now and then a match appears to be refereed correctly. This is the exception not the rule. Correct officiating should be the standard all referees should aspire to – with VAR it should be much easier.
The governing bodies are always pushing the message “Refereeing is a difficult job”. I realise that but ALL of the governing bodies are not willing to discuss the problems and do even less to rectify obvious shortcomings.
With multiple cameras at games fans can actually work out what is going on when errors are made. I am fed up with games being decided by how many errors the officials make.
I am at the point that for my own health I will not watch games with certain officials in charge as they appear to be refereeing a completely different game to the one unfolding in front of them.
The media don’t help at all as they are just as biased. Most of the time I watch games with no sound.
So, we have Howard Webb at (Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL) and Tony Scholes (Chief Football Officer at the Premier League) both doubling down (and not for the first time) on the matter of poor refereeing.
It’s good to see some supporters of other clubs, specifically Man. Utd and even Tottenham put aside partisan issues after realising that Arsenal are being handled in a different manner to other teams.
seismic
“It’s good to see some supporters of other clubs, specifically Man. Utd and even Tottenham put aside partisan issues after realising that Arsenal are being handled in a different manner to other teams.”
Is that true? A genuine question and I would be interested to know.
Before I retired I worked in a predominantly male work place, of which many were football fans. My base was within earshot of Selhurst Park, therefore a fair few were Palace fan.
Although quite a fair bunch I would say that generally they felt that Palace were the worst treated by referees, but more pertinently to a man they felt the ‘big teams’ were ALWAYS favoured, and they definitely included Arsenal in that.
I always found Man Utd, and Spurs fans were generally balanced when it came to the footballing side. Best teams, players, who played best, how a match might go, who deserved to win.
There was also some sympathy as to how we were treated in the media, especially by talksport, although they just found it funny.
But I never got the feeling any fans thought anything other than it was THEIR team that got screwed by referees.
So, in general, when talking about teams and players it was all pretty convivial.
How your own team was refereed was a different story altogether, and by and large was a subject best avoided.
Although I have seen a couple of high profile ‘bloggers’ coming to Arsenals defence over a few incidents, especially the Rice one, the comments section is still as partisan as ever.
The most common theme is along the lines of ‘how can Arsenal complain about x, y and z, when they got away with a, b and c”? And these comparisons don’t just go back to last week or even last year, they often go back decades.
So, if you have seen a bit of ‘fan’ sympathy/support for how we are being refereed, and I’m not questioning what you have seen, it will be a massive shift from anything I have experienced, ever.
But to be fair, I am out of the mess room environment now, and read little media, and zero social media.
PS I do not count Chelsea fans amongst any of the above because to a man their fans are a bunch of ********
One of Mark Goldbridge’s YouTube channels featured the Rice sending-off on the day it happened. Terry Flewers’ The Football Terrace had a video discussion of the same incident, highlighting Dermot Gallagher’s hypocrisy a couple of days later. I saw a few Spurs supporters on Twitter highlighting the PGMOL inconsistency in the last couple of weeks.