Manchester City v Arsenal 18 Dec 2016 – The Match Officials. Expect a totally biased cockeyed performance

27 Replies to “Manchester City v Arsenal 18 Dec 2016 – The Match Officials. Expect a totally biased cockeyed performance”

1. Good to see we’re already playing the blame game, it’s never too early to start blaming someone else

2. Like we had against Chelsea you mean? And we have had just as much trouble from Atkinson as you. As for Clutterbug, who gave last weeks game to Chelsea, he did the same to us in Dec 2011. We went on to win the league.

   Anyway, well for done for getting your excuses in early.

3. The only way we can hope for a fair match is if the whistle and the cards gain consciousness of their own, and ref the games themselves. He is an absolute disaster of a ref.

4. It is not blame but prempting the shame of the PGMOL method of cheating. If City are successful while the officials are honest, then the world is a better place. Better still would be an Arsenal win despite the cheating sons of the northern counties of England.

5. Man, I hate that arrogant prick atkinson

6. Good news: we haven’t lost against Manchester City in the last six matches (including Community Shield). 1:1, 3:0, 2:2, 2:0, 2:1, 2:2. Three victories and three draws.

   Very good news: they are without their best striker and arguably the best striker in the league (Agüero), their best central defender (Kompany) and their best defensive midfielders (Gündogan and Fernandinho).

   Bad news: the last time we lost against Manchester City, it was played in December at Etihad and Martin Atkinson was in charge in one of the most biased performances I have ever seen. It was so biased that I hoped for Flamini to head-butt Atkinson. We were denied a clear goal, Yaya Toure should have been sent off for a dangerous tackle on Giroud and we were denied a penalty when Zabaleta stopped Wilshere’s ball with his hand.

   I don’t expect anything good from Atkinson but I do expect our boys to give their best and thrash City. Anything else than three points and we would be out of the title race already with a realistic chance that our season would be a fight for the Champions League place. With eight or nine points behind Chelsea would be too much as they don’t have either Champions League or League Cup to distract them so they will be in a strong position to win the league. They have won eleven in a row with two home games coming (oh, yes, so much about Moaninho’s claims that he was the only one capable of leading that bunch of players to the title) so we have to win at Etihad if we want to prolong the title race.

   Man City-Arsenal 0:3 (Alexis, Özil, Iwobi)

7. Arsenal should not count on their 6 unbeaten times run against Man City, neither should they blame the referring of this match as favouring Man City by ref’ Martin Atkinson match officiating as a ground for dropping points at the Etihad tomorrow nor blame any bad luck for not taking all points in this big game.

   The Gunners MUST out performed the Citizens in all the aspects of this game and rely on this their superior performance in the game to undo Man City in any foreknown, unforeseen and unpredicted issues arising during the course of playing this match and win the match.

   For Chelsea have by their win over Crystal Palace today put us in a precarious position immensely in the PL as the pressure is now on us to succeed totally at the Etihad tomorrow or else, we’ll be into deeper water of trouble in the PL than we’ve imagined. But God forbids this trouble happening to us. Amen!

8. Uzama; here, here!

   Anyone who thinks Atkinson is competent, well……

   Jeremy, you need to get a life, grow a pair, get some glasses and a sould, since you sold the one you had, for cold chips!

   May it be forbidden that such adversity can betray us.

   More so, lets just hope the anti-east middle thing is in our favour.

   Alexis and Ozil will be 100% with it along with Kos The Boss, Xhaka comes to the fore the bigger the match is and Coq in the team phot had that same grimace as Kos.

   I expect the full squad to turn out, City have 0 brains in midfield and this is where you can control and dominate the game, lets bring back the Chelsea result from earlier this season.

   Arsenal lose one, it’s the same old Arsenal, although it is celebrated that the same defeat to us, kick started their run.

   Lets batter the citizens like they were Ukranian students wanting into the EU and we were the Ukranian Titushky!

   We excel when we are wounded, we must respond and begin the year with a hot streak!

   COYG

9. The pgmol are really going for us at the moment,
   Amazing how many times we get this ref in big games.
   Could easily concede a dodgy pen, though they will have to be careful, as the stats on the amount of dodgy pens we are conceding will start to look a bit suspicious.
   A tricky enough game, and not helped by this ref.
   Not a good week….at all for Arsenal so far, let’s hope things change a bit tomorrow. At least City will aim to play football rather than the clogball so many play against us…..or at least I would assume

10. Arsenal’s perennial answer to a dodgy match official?
    We must just win IN SPITE OF THEM. 😉

11. You can’t beat a good excuse before a big game as I always say !

12. It isn’t making excuses to point out the bias and incompetence of the refs. It is a solemn duty and we should be grateful Untold does it. Since we have only lost two premiership games so far this season, and Untold has pointed out the record of the ref before every match, excuses has nothing to do with it.

13. To the two city fans at the top; it’s got absolutely nothing to do with shifting the blame if Arsenal loose. If Arsenal get out-played and thus lose the game, then the majority of posters here are more than willing to concede to that.

    Why is it that we can predict when there will be an absolutely awful performance from the ref? When we were given Oliver for the Chelsea game, it was predicted then that he would have a good game; which indeed he did.

    Who the ref is should be utterly inconsequential, but that is never the case, as it is proven time and time again that certain refs will be put in charge of certain teams more than any other and will put in consistently bias performances, consistently favouring certain teams.

14. @ Shoot – Again, it’s got nothing to do with excuses. If you check out the ref review for the Chelsea game, you will see that because the referee was Michael Oliver, people predicted he would have a good game.

    You can make all of the baseless claims/statements that you like, but when there is evidence that completely contradicts the points you are making, then you just end up looking like a bit of a idiot (which I know isn’t hard for you).

15. Whatever, we have to win this game, else we have to rely on Chel$ to lose a game for us to catch them. (And with Pool barking at our heels too).

    We cannot afford to lose concentration at any time this season, else we can kiss PL cup goodbye!

    That said, we should win this if we put in a proper performance even though the ref is hovering.

16. City appears to be wounded and if we play right we could teach Pep a big lesson as well as upping our GD. 🙂 “you are at our home now Pep”.

17. OT so many trips from behind worse than that by Xhaka only draw yellow cards. Shoulder barge, after the ball has gone, by Ibrahimovic only given a yellow. Two footed flying tackles ignored or given yellow cards. Amazing double standards by PGMOL officials.

18. Maybe if Pep, as reported, does not practice to the English league interpretation of nearly fair play it would explain how his players get pushed to the edge without having the tools to fight back; when they do try to they make a hash of it and the ref feels obliged to act. A thug being half decent feels more acceptable than a half decent chap trying to be a thug?

    “Letting the game flow” rules and this season’s meaning of handball mean the refs are often not making mistakes as such they are pipers doing as they are paid to do. (Even so there are too many obvious errors everyone agrees to but it remains to be seen if there is a script being followed).

    Today’s game between two teams that want to play football should be close enough that they don’t have to give the underdog a fighting chance.

    I am not (ever it seems) as confident as Samuel but hope we are analysing chances thwarted and taken, not debating the possible implications of decisions we may or may not disgree with in a game played to different interpretations than we would apply, and of course a great gunners victory.

19. Amy’s looking for an eff-off win. This could be the one.
    UTA

20. I recall Atkinson’s malign influence in the 6-3 game at Man City a couple of years ago.

    Definitely cheated us of 2 points on that occasion.

21. John L

    A game that should have finished 5-5 if the correct decisions had been applied.

22. With Arsenal’s rivals winning Atkinson will want to make sure we fall even further behind. The fixture list was never kind to us in first place; two away games up north few days apart…but sure we would have been ok without biased refereeing.

23. John L
    Yes, that one was painful to take. And the one versus Chelsea where a stamp on Coquelin wasn’t punished went on to score at the other end directly from that foul. To rub salt into our wounds he gave a penalty for a blatant ramires dive, for 2-0 Chelsea win.

    The not so politically correct inner me wants to say he has honesty issues, rather than competence issues.

24. …wasn’t punished *and Chelsea went on to score at the other end…

25. It’s shocking the level mediocrity or should I say bias in refeeing in the EPL. A friend of mine rightly said that soon fans will lose interest in the game on account of refereeing. It seems to get even worse if the team in question is from the red divide of North London. It’s horrible. I hope that this match will have some semblance of fairness..

26. Somesemblance, ofside goal one by a similar margin to the goal which woul have put us in a commanding 2-0 first half lead, Silva offside in the build up.

    Silva should have gone for two yellows!

    Iwobi shouldn’t have started, Ox and Perez pace and power.

    If anyone says anything to me about Monreal again, Sane was eating him all game and then Sterling!

    It’s worse than Mert, which shows the quality of Per and his positioning!

    It’s not half as bad, we need to win our head to heads and beat the small frys. Chelsea are 1-0 for how many games, it can’t last!

27. We are good at chasing games, but holding onto leads is a different matter, 3 we lost in the league, we were leading.