The extent of the collapse of football as a contest between two teams looking to play approximately by the spirit as well as the letter of the rules was once again revealed at the Ems as Hull added the new insanity of rotational accusation to their well-practiced rotational fouling and rotational timewasting.
With the Hull “manager” acknowledging that he had spent a long time talking to the “manager” of Blackburn last weekend we knew exactly what we were in for. But just when I thought saturday was as bad as it could get Hull chose to go even further in bringing football into utter disgrace.
There was early on a two footed lunge on Theo with the Hull player having both feet off the ground, flying through the air, studs towards Theo’s ankles – it was a miracle there was no permanent injury. And not even a foul was given.
In fact the ref didn’t even start booking Hull players until the second half, by which time they were onto their third time around with the rotational fouls.
But it was at the end that the real insanity started as Hull started to throw allegations in all directions, undoubtedly hoping that at least one of them would stick (although such is the childishness of their petulance, they probably forgot that it won’t do Hull any good at all except to act as an excuse when they are relegated – and the rest of the EPL will now have a clearer view of what Hull City is about.)
Allegation 1 was that the Gallas goal was offside. I have no idea if the keeper touched the ball or not – and that of course is the deciding factor. I can’t even tell from the TV watched late last night – so how on earth anyone can tell from an instant judgement 50 yards away, I have no idea. Perhaps these “managers” have magic glasses.
But that is the point of the Hull tirade – they make the complaints so thick and fast and the jouranlists are so primed with their ready made “how did you feel” and “how important” questions, they don’t ask, “How on earth can you know from fifty yards straight off if the keeper touched the ball?”
But the Hull “manager” knows the game. The trick he played was to move straight on to complaining that the Lord Wenger didn’t shake hands with him after the game. Ah! What a disaster! The game is destroyed! The world ends! He didn’t shake hands! Oh my! I shall cry all night! What a nasty fellow the Frenchman is!
What sort of world is this where whether two men briefly shake hands at the end of a game matters or not? The Lord Wenger’s never shaken my hand, and I’ve got some way to pay his salary over the past 10 years or so. I’m not crying.
And then again, before journos can get that childish bit of tripe into their heads, the “manager” of Hull is off again, this time saying that Fábregas spat at the feet of the assistant “manager” of Hull in the tunnel.
The assistant “manager” then said the most odd thing. He said of Cesc, “Hopefully, he’s proud of himself.”
Now let’s pause and think on this for a mo. Why would the “manager” hope that Cesc is proud? What point is there is that? Some days I am proud of what I have done, some not. But why would anyone say, in what is presumably some kind of modernist (but not post-modernist) ironical manner “hopefully he is proud of himself.” It is so bizarre it is surreal.
“I caught the bus today.”
“Hopefully you are proud of yourself.”
Maybe it means something to you, but I still don’t get it. I’m told it is a sort of sarcastic irony – maybe it is post-pre-surreal-modernism. Who knows?
Again it was all delivered in a rush, and again no journalist had the wit or spirit to intercept and question.
Goodness knows what the FA and EPL will do. If they stay true to form they’ll do nothing about the rotational fouling, timewasting and complaining, but they will leap on the Cesc allegation, and find an obscure rule about spitting at feet, find him guilty based on the say-so of one man, despite the denial of all others and no evidence, and ban him for twelve years.
There is no doubt that by doing nothing about Blackburn or Hull the FA and the EPL are guilty of bringing the game into disrepute and they should both be wound up at once. But amazingly it looks as if no one was too seriously injured in the game, and we can go to the Zebras match on saturday with a fairly fullish squad. As for Hull, a quick return to Division 4 is about all we can hope for, and they will undoubtedly join Blackburn and Allerdyce in having the Curse of Arsenal put on them.
What we will find is that Hull, Blackburn and the other sorry apologies for football clubs will know that the three rotational approaches work, and they’ll do it again, and again, and again.
Yes Arsenal won 15 to 2 as measured by shots on target, which tells you something about the game. But mostly it was the evil of rotation.
(c) Tony Attwood 2009
u r very right… Hull are cry babies… and i guess thats y Arsenal are now in Semis and not Hull… i think FA shld take action against these teams and be uniform in the action it takes… i have a feeling that arsenal can win a Double this year… both FA cup and Champions League….
Go Gunners….
Hull were embarrassing last night. After scoring their (fluky) goal, they had a freekick and then a goal ruled out for offside, then sat back and wasted as much time as possible.
If i was Phil Brown I’d be too ashamed to even bring up the fact that Myhill got booked for time wasting. Flip, he was lucky not to get a second yellow for that. He was taking about a minute on verey goalkick or freekick he took, and the rest of the team too. At one stage I thought Hull were just going to try and take the ball into the corner and wait out the next 40 minutes!
As to the spitting incident, it really doesnt sound like Cesc, but obviously it all (allegedly) “happened” in the tunnel so who can say what happened. Unless its proven then I wont believe, and have no reason to believe, that Cesc did anything wrong. Truth is Hull were a poor excuse for a football team – I had quite good feeling towards them for their plucky success etc but last night and the post match reaction ahs blown that away now.
Their fans were superb, they dont deserve such an idiot of a manager spoiling the night for them.
Interesting atmosphere at the game last night too. as ever on a weeknight it takes time to fill up, but there were still a significant number of empty seats by half time – was this because for the last 4/5 days you could only get tickets from the ticket office in person maybe? Still, as Hull wasted more time, and played like more cheats the atmosphere warmed up pretty nicely. (guess there were a lot of occasional people there too. people sat next to me spent entire game taking random photos. tch.)
Still, bring on CSKA London in the semis!
After the league game against Hull I stayed behind to applaud them off. I thought they were committed, tried to play football and made a good account of themselves.
It was hard to believe it was the same club last night. The cynicism was shocking and I have lost all the respesct I had. I now hope they get relegated.
Who knows what happened regarding Cesc, but during the game Brian Horton was doing his hard man act, staring at wenger in a very aggresive manner. I wasn’t surprised that Wenger didn’t want to shake his hand.
Most ridiculous accusation was that Wenger got the keeper booked. No, he got booked (about 30 mins too late) because he was deliberately time-wasting, which is a form of cheating.
Gallas’ goal should have been ruled off-side, but I didn’t care as Hull showed such a cynical approach to the game.
Anyway another game Saturday – I’m sure that Kevin Nolan will restore my faith in football!
PHIL BROWN IS A LIAR, check out this photo:
http://images.rivals.net/08/09/460×238/Arsene-Wenger-and-Phil-Brown_1237515.jpg
And now Brown has criticized Cesc for his CLOTHING on BBC Radio 5:
“One, being on the pitch after the game – whether there is a ruling against that I have no idea but he had no right to be there. Two, dressed in the manner in which he was dressed.”
The guy’s completely lost it.
Apparently, AW said after the game “I came forward to shake his hand and there was no one there after looking around”.
Also, Cesc has vehemently denied that he spit at anyone. I think it was sky that showed some footage of Cesc celebrating on the pitch but you see no spitting from Cesc. I think this is a case of Brown being a very sore loser, inventing things or misinterpreting things.
If AW had come out with a rant like that after a game, the media would be attacking him for being a sore loser. Brown’s claim that the ref was influenced by the local crowd beggars belief.
LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT: the fault lies with that incompetent do-nothing idiot Mike Riley for failing to control the game. He let Hull get on with their miserable timewasting tactics and constant, obvious fouling throughout, that made it almost impossible to play the game. The pathetic tactic of blatant, EXTREME timewasting the moment they got their goal, so early in the game, is one of the worst pieces of gamesmanship I’ve seen on our home ground. They scored in the 12th minute and from that point on, it was constant, constant, obvious timewasting to a comical degree, and Riley did nothing to stop it.
How Brown can believe his was the better team shows his colossal delusion. It’s obvious their early success and good press in their first season in the top flight has gone to his massive head. It’s a pity, because until this game I had a lot of respect for Hull and wished them well.
When Hull beat us on our home ground, our fans applauded their team off the pitch and applauded their fans. We gooners criticized our team’s performance and credited Hull. AW said nothing critical of Hull. THAT’S BECAUSE THEY CAME TO OUR HOME GROUND AND PLAYED FOOTBALL.
We can take losing if the opposition PLAYS FOOTBALL, something that Hull didn’t do last night. I read somewhere that Brown talked to Fat Sam about how to defeat us before last night’s game. That’s the game plan they came up with: pathethic, obvious, desperate timewasting 13 minutes into the game. And rotational fouling of course. Hull deserve ZERO sympathy. And btw, when we were in the lead, we didn’t timewaste, we kept trying to score.
The winning goal was contentious but the point is that it was not obvious to the linesman. It was not an easy thing to judge and sometimes that happens in football, it’s happened to us too often. It’s not as if it was an obvious offside goal, it was close, and questionable.
Ok, this proves that Sam Allardyce lives on his own very strange little planet, this just beggars belief:
http://www.metro.co.uk/sport/football/article.html?Allardyce%3a_Refs_to_blame_for_diving&in_article_id=586652&in_page_id=43
Watch the replay of the 2nd goal. The ball came off the defender’s head and THEN off the goalkeepers fist.
Even those shitemongers on Setanta’s post game show begrudgingly acknowledged it.
I used to enjoy Phil Brown’s “Low rent James Bond thing” that he has going on, but now he’ll just become another victim of “The Curse Of Arsenal”
Have fun in the championship douchebag…
phil complained that the arsenal fans jeered his players from 15 minutes on, coincedence that they had just gone 1 up? i think not. there was no timewasting before they scored, or after we did. its so cynical its pathetic. its really dissapointing that he came with such a different game plan from last time. ok, he didnt get the home draw, his squad is tired and the clubs just paid stupid money for broken bullard, theyre 13th in the league with one win in 12, he’s a bit down on his luck generally.
i saw it on satanta and in the first half they showed the hull asst bloke sneering at arsene, i think the commentator even mentioned it. it was probably in one of those 30 second periods where nothing was happening on the pitch. you know, when the goalie was fastidiously preparing for a no hope piece of shit free kick that we would have taken before the satanta commentators had got their fingers out their asses and realised a free had even been given.
phils comments about how cesc was dressed really says much more about phil than it does about cesc. he obviously likes to think that he is a snappy dresser but i reckon hes just got a touch of the green-eyed monster. cesc is one of the most skilled midfielders in the world today, and phil lives in hull. its a no-brainer.