Note: because of some misunderstandings and all that could go wrong going wrong we couldn’t publish the preview before the match this time. But it sure makes some interesting reading even now after the match.
Arsenal v QPR 26 December 2014 – The Match Officials
by Andrew Crawshaw
Firstly here is the PGMO table of shame updated following Walter’s review of the West Brom Game. Ref Review : WBA – Arsenal. Biased by circumstance more than by nature . No decisions in that game to change the outcome, but yet another not given penalty and a typical bias against the teams of 22/78 and an overall rating of 70%. One of the comments on Walter’s review was that it is strange that we think of an overall score from a referee of 70% as acceptable. So far only Moss 81% and Jones 82% have higher scores, Foy is one of a handful between 70 and 73%; Dean at 53% and Atkinson 44.7% are the worst scores to date.
Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents
2nd Yellow Cards 0 6
Red Cards 3 8
Penalties 2 9
Goals 0 3
Total 5
26
Possible Cost in Points 2 18
On to Sunday
- Referee – Martin Atkinson
Assistants – M Mullarkey and P Kirkup
Fourth Official – P Dowd
Current Season Second time for Mr Atkinson, he was at on hand to rob us at Chelsea gaining what is, to date, the lowest overall rating of the season 44.7% weighted.
Untold’s Unacceptable Referee Review: Chelsea – Arsenal
Bias against the teams 14/86 and 6 wrong important decisions (second yellow cards, red cards, penalties and goal decisions). In Chronological order – Min20 Cahill should have a straighy red card for dangerous challenge on Alexis, Min 20 on the opposite side of the pitch Ivanovic elbows Özil off the ball and should be sent off, Min 40 Oscar should have a second yellow card, Min 43 Alexis should be sent off for a punch on Ivanovic (who shouldn’t have been on the pitch, Min 62 Arsenal should have a penalty when Fabregas handles the ball in his own area, Min 90 Alexis should be sent off for a punch on Fabregas.
Wrong decisions and a terrible bias cost Arsenal points. Chelsea should have been down to 9 men in Minute 20 and I fail to believe that Arsenal would have lose to a Chelsea team down to 9 players.
Martin Atkinson has refereed one match for QPR this season – their 2-2 home draw with Stoke on 20 September.
2013/2014 Four Arsenal games
Sunderland v Arsenal 14 Sep 2013 (1 – 3) Another game where Mr Atkinson put in a decent shift, OK penalty against Kos, decent decision to blow for a foul before Altidore put the ball in the net. Sunderland 1 – Arsenal 3 : a longer one, some interesting things about referees and booing and hating players
Arsenal v Liverpool 2 Nov 2013 (2 – 0) – a game where Walter didn’t mention the referee once in his post match summary Arsenal – Liverpool 2-0, Who had predicted this league table in August?
Man City v Arsenal 14 Dec 2013 (6 – 3) – Mr Atkinson assisted by Mssrs Burt and Lennard made a complete ‘horlicks’ of this game to the extent that Walter did a full referee review of this game A referee review Martin City – Arsenal. An utterly unacceptable referee – 21 wrong decisions and all against Arsenal. Key wrong decisions in Min 37 Monreal was wrongly called offside when he had both a shooting or passing option, wrong decision killed a goalscoring chance, in the following minute Negredo scores for City; Min 45+2 Walcott called back for offside again wrongly and again killing a promising attack; Min 55 Toure with studs up challenge on Giroud, not even a foul should have been at least a yellow and probably a red card; Min 59 Zabaletta handles the ball in the penalty area, nothing given; Min 64 Nasri dives with Sagna near him wins free kick from which City score, no foul so no goal and Nasri should be booked; <Min 89 Bendtner goal wrongly ruled out for offside, he was level.
A game where the referee and his assistants decided the outcome of the game.
Everton v Arsenal 6 Apr 2014 (3 – 0) Everton and a bit of Chelsea – Arsenal 3-0
Arsenal didn’t create enough to win the game but Atkinson didn’t make it easy for us, he was good in booking Coleman for a reckless challenge on Sagna, then forgot that standard when he allowed bad challenges from Naysmith on Arteta and Baines on Cazorla; he should have dismissed Barkley for pushing Arteta to the ground with both hands, booking Arteta instrad. His assistant then chipped in in extra time when Sanogo scored but was wrongly called for offside.
In Summary
1. Mr Atkinson is one of those names I shudder at when I see it come up in an Arsenal game.
2. He can have a good game but rarely does when Arsenal are involved.
3. He is not good at making Important Decisions (second yellow or red cards, penalties or goals) and it would not be a surprise to me if he got a number wrong again in this game.
4. The only good thing is that we are playing QPR and not Chelsea, City or one of the other top teams and he might think twice about tilting the game too far which should ensure that our extra quality will win through.
5. On the other hand, if any of our players give him an opportunity for a card or worse he will take it.
COYG
I had the impression it took Atkinson ages to blow for the Arsenal penalty. You know the one that was given. Even a blind man could see that this was as clear as a penalty can get and yet he waited ages in the hope that some divine interception would make it possible to back out of it. He hated giving that penalty. You could see it.
Just as you could see him enjoying pulling out the red card.
Your preview was spot on Andrew. As usual
Sorry about the format of the table will try to fix that later on
“Current Season Second time for Mr Oliver, he was at on hand to rob us at Chelsea ” Oops.
Its getting more blatant! And it seems no one cares! I’ve got to the point of see for yourself I don’t need to say anything.
Indeed with Mr. Oliver the match before we had another one for the second time. The previews coming fast after each other and with the Christmas meal still in the stomach such errors can happen. 😉
@Walter,
what i thought was he didnt give the penalty until the assistant flagged/said somwthing.
I might be wrong, but it was not his call.
It wasn’t thoughts of a Christmas meal -I was suffering with a virus which was causing me temperature to fluctuate by a degree and a half every hour or so. I think that was the only mistake I missed..
The West Ham preview is with Tony.
Good preview Andrew and with the advantage of hindsight spot on – unfortunately!
Walter, you are correct, Atkinson did delay before awarding Arsenal a penalty, not sure if it was because he did not want to give the penalty or because of being under instruction not to give Arsenal penalties, or both!
In contrast, Atkinson did not waste even a fraction of a second when wrongly awarding a penalty for Debuchy’s clearance.
I would challenge “Webb the propagandist” to tell us that Atkinson got 98.4% of his decisions correct yesterday.
Thanks Andrew
Get well soon 🙂
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What did we see? An offical not call the kick on the BFG but minutes later make the far far softer call against Debuchy.
Contrary to about a hundred years of recorded experience (there have been studies) this obvious bias was not observed or recorded to favour the Home team, this is where the ancient and common use age of the the term “Homer” for refs comes from. N.B.: you don’t need to have played in the ryman south for eighteen years to understand this convention and understanding in the sport.
So what was going on? No need for me to describe or even bother explaining what everyone can see, front he same offical who has previously incorrectly sent off Gibbs for wearing the wrong shirt andhavingthe wrong colour skin:
There is no rational or reasonable explanation that can be given to explain the lack of aid for the officals in top flight football same as in every other major sport.
For someone who claims they have experience of professional sport to come on a sport blog and claim and to try and defend this circumstance is slightly weird, given what we know has gone on at clubs like Crawley Town, with players like Herrera, what happens in other sports: the advice the ECB gives to all pros regarding fixers and groomers with the aid of the police etc.:
Fair to conclude that these constant and exposed disinengious snipers above are either immensely stupid or they are, as has been previously exposed with their transparent and failed attempts to airbrush the private sports physio industry in top level sport out of the equation, they are simple Liars. Same old same old turds. 😉
Good afternoon MR Crawshaw. I could not finish tweeting my tweets on the AFC vs QPR match on the twitter yesterday as my inlaws came-in visiting me all the way from the South Eastern Nigeria. But I managed to be monitoring the game munite by munite on twitter even as they arrived but I stopped any further tweets. We thank God as Arsenal finally won the game despite the apprehension of Ref Martins Atkinson possible anti-Arsenal refereeing. I have started to look ahead to our taking another maximum points as the Gunners visit the West Hammers at their Boleyn Ground tomorrow. The Gunners MUST collect all the hammers from the Hammersmiths and hammers them to total submissions. I believe the boss will not give-in to any compromise of selecting solely his favourite Gunners but also select the more productive Gunners to execute the game project successfully tomorrow. The Suspension of Giroud can easily be contained by the boss as he still has Podolski, Welbeck, Sanogo and Akpom within the rank and file of the Gunners to choose a striker to lead the line. MY PRODUCTIVE GUNNERS START: Szczesny. Bellerin..DebuchyChambers..Gibbs. FlaminiCoquelin. SanchezOxladePodolski. Akpom. Summary: Bellerin bombardment down should keep WH busy with defending. This is a strong WH side at home. Flamini cannot alone cope at DM. Coquelin should start with him. The boss should play 3 attacking MDs of Sanchez, the fit again Oxlade and Prolific Podolski. Podolski to stand in for the preferred Ramsey as the holding attacking midfielder. Whose duty is also to cover the overlapping LB Gibbs. Sanchez should also be covering Bellerin as he bursts out. BFG should rest for the Saints game. I think he shouldn be tired. Debuchy should be preferred by the boss at CB for his quality of headings and size. Debuchy is suspectable at RB as he gives away penalty but better compose at CB than Monreal who could be busted through by the WH attackers. And finally, Welbeck has been off-form. Sanogo or Akpom should lead the Gunners line with the later preferred as he scores more often for the youth team. The boss should give a starting chance to shine in this game.
Good afternoon MR Crawshaw. I could not finish tweeting my tweets on the AFC vs QPR match on the twitter yesterday as my inlaws came-in visiting me all the way from the South Eastern Nigeria. But I managed to be monitoring the game munite by munite on twitter even as they arrived but I stopped any further tweets. We thank God as Arsenal finally won the game despite the anticipated anti-Arsenal refereeing by Ref Martins Atkinson. I have started to look ahead to our taking another maximum points when the Gunners visit the West Hammers at their Boleyn Ground tomorrow. The Gunners MUST collect all the hammers from the Hammersmiths and hammers them to total submissions. I believe the boss will not give-in to any compromise of selecting solely his favourite Gunners but also select the more productive Gunners to execute this game project successfully tomorrow. The Suspension of Giroud can easily be contained by the boss as he still has Podolski, Welbeck, Sanogo and Akpom within the rank and file of the Gunners to choose a striker to lead the line. MY PRODUCTIVE GUNNERS START: Szczesny. Bellerin..DebuchyChambers..Gibbs. FlaminiCoquelin. SanchezOxladePodolski. Akpom. Summary: Bellerin bombardment down the edge should keep WH busy with defending. This is a strong WH side at home. So, Flamini cannot alone cope at DM. Coquelin should start with him. The boss should play 3 attacking MDs of Sanchez, the fit again Oxlade and the Prolific Podolski. Podolski to stand in for the preferred Ramsey as the holding attacking midfielder. Whose duty is also to cover the overlapping LB Gibbs. Sanchez should also be covering the RB Bellerin as he bursts out. BFG should be rested for the Saints game. I think he shouldn be tired. Debuchy should be preferred by the boss at CB for his quality of headings and his size. Debuchy is suspectable at RB as he gives away penalty but he is composed better at CB than Monreal who could be busted through by the WH attackers. And finally, Welbeck has been off-form. Sanogo or Akpom should lead the Gunners line with the later preferred as he scores more often for the youth team. The boss should give him a starting chance to shine in this game.
OT: Warnock was the first, Palace sacked him
Onuoha had both arms around Welbeck, and he went to ground. Did Onuoha do enough to bring Welbeck down? I don’t know, but isn’t holding illegal regardless? And didn’t the PGMO recently have a song and dance about how they were going to clamp down on holding in the box? It was the sort of thing you see given all the time, and if an Arsenal defender had done that you can be sure the ref would have awarded a penalty, and every man and his dog would have trotted out the old cliche “Well he gave the ref an excuse”.
You just have to compare that to the penalty against Debuchy, where he very clearly made a good tackle, it was even obvious the ball took a large deflection, and there were no excuses for Atkinson because he was in the perfect position to have a good view of it.
QPR had a later penalty claim with Zamora, but it looked to me like Zamora had elbowed Gibbs before the cross came in, which caused Gibbs to fall, although the replays weren’t clear. Otherwise Gibbs goes down very early if he’s supposedly challenging for the ball. Earlier Zamora had pulled Gibbs to the ground and then fell on top of him, but the ref ignored both incidents.
And Onuoha clearly pushed Giroud into the keeping, and just about anyone would be fuming if someone had pushed you into a keeper flying out to make a save. That was a very dangerous and malicious thing to do. In my opinion Giroud was only sent off (correctly) because of Onuoha’s reaction. We saw Wilshere put his head on Fellaini, who didn’t fall theatrically, and Wilshere wasn’t sent off (but perhaps should have been). Onouha should have had at least a yellow for (1) dangerous play, or (2) un-sporting conduct in trying to get Giroud sent off.
Only lily livered surrender monkey foreigners dive in football and don’t like it up ’em. Watching Gazprom clubs simply makes my testosterone rise, (maybe it’s the gas fumes?) such upstanding quality, no diving, no favours from the officials who not only act but look like they belong to a secret society, and they certainly like it up ’em. Cor blimey guv’ner.
What “IT” is I have no idea, the plundits never describe what “it” is. If we were to ask Mikel or Luiz would they say that “it” involves their special agents? 😉
‘Arry the plundits favourite (can’t imagine why) for England?
I’ve just realised Warnock might again be forced upon the unsuspecting football fan by the broadcasters. Imagine him and Redknapp Jnr together? The horror, the horror.
Transfer news – I don’t see anything at Arsenal.com, and his place in the team is still occupied. But, the news says that Kris Olsson (on loan at FC Midtjylland) has been sold.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/417225/DONE-DEAL-Arsenal-AGREE-sell-attacking-midfielder
Well, a verification of sorts. Hector Bellerin has a tweet, acknowledging that Kris Olsson has moved. Best of luck with your career Kris Olsson, and good luck in Denmark.
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Is this worse than a headbutt in the heat of the moment? Gervinho posted on twitter that he was going to be out of town, and so thieves broke into his home and stole stuff. It’s not nice to see him berate AW in the press, but it isn’t nice his home got broken into either.
Get well soon. If you think the virus is of the cold/flu variety, increasing dietary zinc can help with some symptoms.
Thank you Andrew, get well soon. As for the article…..would be considered uncanny, if these reds were not so predictable
Refs, not reds, although some reds are very predictable when it comes to refs
Gf60
December 27, 2014 at 10:24 am
“Current Season Second time for Mr Oliver, he was at on hand to rob us at Chelsea ” Oops.
What are you on about? no mention of Oliver! Green houses & stones.
A different slant on injuries.
I see in the news this morning, that Brooklyn Beckham apparently has a bodyguard. He is playing U16 for Arsenal. It would not surprise me to learn that Arsenal has grounds people with skills in that area as well. But, you certainly hope that there is never a need for bodyguards at any Arsenal function.
I wonder if referees are any use in that situation?