By Tony Attwood
It’s funny; we’ve been alerting the media for years and years that there is something seriously wrong with the standard, consistency and secrecy of refereeing in England, and they have refused to take note.
But today, in a match in which Arsenal snatched victory in injury time, the one national broadcaster in England covering the game, ended the match with a long rant against the quality of refereeing. It wasn’t a case of suggesting there were “one or two things the referee might want to have a look at afterward,” but a serious and long rant against the ability of the referee to see basic issues and know the laws of the game.
Of course I don’t hear all the radio coverage Arsenal matches – in days when I am allowed to go, I actually am there myself watching the game. But I can say that normally there isn’t a word against the referee and there hasn’t been since the moment Alan Green suddenly changed his approach at BBC Radio 5 Live, without any explanation.
True, the commentators did not actually call the referee bent or biased, but both the commentator and co-commentator on Talk Sport joined in a solid rant about the basic ability of the referee to do his job, and called for an enquiry.
Now we do know that TalkSport has a very serious anti-Arsenal agenda that they are following – as can be seen from their headline story recently that “David Luiz has cost Arsenal £24MILLION in one season.”
What the radio station did with that commentary was typical of the weasle-mannered approach that they seem to want to adopt. For having told us in the headline that “David Luiz has cost Arsenal up to £24million for just one season,” in the text they added “according to reports.”
They then went on to say “However, the 33-year-old has failed to provide the necessary maturity befitting a veteran defender such as himself at the heart of the notoriously leaky Gunners’ defence.”
So let’s start there. Here is a league table in the order of goals conceded
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 31 | 28 | 2 | 1 | 70 | 21 | 49 | 86 |
| 2 | Leicester City | 31 | 16 | 7 | 8 | 59 | 29 | 30 | 55 |
| 3= | Manchester United | 31 | 13 | 10 | 8 | 48 | 31 | 17 | 49 |
| 3= | Sheffield United | 31 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 30 | 31 | -1 | 44 |
| 5 | Manchester City | 31 | 20 | 3 | 8 | 77 | 33 | 44 | 63 |
| 6 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 32 | 13 | 13 | 6 | 45 | 34 | 11 | 52 |
| 7 | Crystal Palace | 31 | 11 | 9 | 11 | 28 | 36 | -8 | 42 |
| 8= | Chelsea | 31 | 16 | 6 | 9 | 55 | 41 | 14 | 54 |
| 8= | Tottenham Hotspur | 31 | 12 | 9 | 10 | 50 | 41 | 9 | 45 |
| 8= | Arsenal | 31 | 10 | 13 | 8 | 43 | 41 | 2 | 43 |
As most people (except those working at TalkSport) can see Arsenal are on a par with Chelsea and Tottenham. But have you heard TalkSport talking about the notoriously leaky Chelsea defence, or that of Tottenham? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall that comment.
What they have claimed however is that Arsenal paid “as much as” £8m to intermediaries in order to bring David Luiz to the club. But no details of that alleged payment has ever been given, and more recently any publication commenting on it, has dropped the allegation, perhaps realising that payment to intermediaries such as agent above the set fee of 5% is illegal, as part of the rules aimed at stopping third party ownership of players.
If there were evidence that Arsenal had paid anything like this amount there most certainly would have been an enquiry. But there has not.
When it ran the story on its web site the radio station blamed to notoriously meandering The Athletic (the magazine that ran the hilarious story about a new Arsenal club being set up to reflect the history of Arsenal, while getting all the details such as the location and name of the original club wrong) as the source.
So there we have it. A wild rant against Arsenal, again. Totally ludicrous suggestions about Arsenal having a terrible defence (it’s not as good as we would like but is the same as Chelsea and Tottenham and they never suffer the same ranting) and suggestions of gross incompetence by the referee (which might be right – I was not there so could not see – but if it was right, it was something that we see all the time with the benefit going against Arsenal – which Talk Sprout never seem to notice at all.)
All in all a shocking display by the broadcaster.
Welll lets put it in context,shall we? I refuse to listen these days to anything t”talk****t” have an opinion on as it’s so anti Arsenal it might as well be a spurs or Man U radio broadcast.Whats annoying them is. this particular ref ( all credit to him) wasn’t acting like the usual HOMER.ref you v.often see.Nor did he let Sheffield.utd get away with any obvious fouls ( what the British media like to call ROBUST 😆)Therefore that gameplan went out of the window.plan B they stuck with which was Route 1 & set plays.From which they got their goal.whats annoying talk sport. Is that they had this down as definite defeat for Arsenal. & they were guttted.Of course had they had an Oliver Atkinson or Mike Dean things would have course gone to plan.oops a slip up there by Mike Riley.However did that happen.must be on his hols.If they want to watch a disgraceful,shameful & totally biased refereeing performance then I suggest they watch the same Mike Riley reffing Man Utd s Arsenal in the 50th match of the 49ers season.
WTF are they moaning about?
Penalty was a penalty.
2 disallowed goals were both offside.
Personally I thought the referee was okay, and that is basically what they don’t like. He wasn’t perfect but he gave 50% of the 50/50’s to us and 50% to them. Didn’t agree with everything but I never felt we were being cheated, and that’s the crux. The referee simply failed in his duty to screw us at every opportunity. Giving us 50/50’sis simply not on.
As I have said many times, it is the media who run the referees, so you can rest assured he, all the other refs and Riley will be left in no doubt that this is NOT what is expected.
-He is being told this is what you can expect if you don’t screw Arsenal.
-Riley is being told to deal with him and remind him of his duty to screw Arsenal.
-He should be punished accordingly.
-Other referees are being told, Arsenal got away with one today and they are due some serious payback.
They are being told, take note, this is what happens if you don’t tow the line and you fail in your duty to screw Arsenal at every opportunity.
This is the station that read out my AAA brothers insulting text when he hadn’t even watched the game.
Pathetic doesn’t even begin to describe them.
Uwot
Spot on. Pretty much the same as what I was typing as you posted.
The ref was pretty fair and they just cant stomach it.
Mark my words this ref, and Arsenal will pay for this.
Agree with both of the posts above.
VAR was used to clarify all the issues and, being human, the referee possibly did make a few errors against both sides.
Most definitely, the complaints are because we won the game – well done to the players and MA.
I don’t usually bother but I’ve read the BBC on line report and the SKY on line ball by ball commentry and neither criticise the ref at all, and surely if this was indeed “The Worst Refereeing Performance I Have Ever Seen” they both would of at least mentioned it don’t you think? I didn’t listen to the BT post match debate so I don’t know what they had to say.
The reason I’ve had a look is to see what they both had to say without influence, because what tends to happen, as Tony points out regularly, is they all tend to pick up a theme, especially a negative Arsenal theme, and run with it, building it up out of all proportion. It will be interesting to see what those 2 drainpipes do come tomorrows jibber jabber.
Will SKY pick up on it and do a hatched job on the ref tomorrow? Wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Almost certain Nitram, I’m really done with football. It’s so bent and the media so twisted I didn’t miss it at all when it wasn’t on.
Putting it back on is just making the whole covid19 lockdown experience even worse.
Pleased we won of course but having to put up with all the media and pundit shit again and especially ex player super bonus payments for slagging off (probably) Trying to ignore mostly.
What is wrong with Arsenal board? Do the board members have ambition like the other top division teams? Why don’t they want success, to win trophies? An investment that doesn’t yield commensurate or comparable returns is worth disposing of. Arsenal fans must show a greater vocal determination to cause investment in quality players. The era of the mid 1990s when you bought cheap players and expected them to compete at the highest level is long gone. While the club has good young players, too much burden is placed on them for the peanuts they earn. How much winning mentality can a team extract from a bunch of young players who earn about £3,000 per week each or less? They are still neophytes in the game: that’s why they are paid little. That also means that there is a limit to stretching them. I believe that Arteta needs to spend at least £100 million on 2 or 3 quality players to beef up his defence and midfield. Is that too much for Kroenke if he truly loves the club and wants it to compete with the big boys? At the same time, the club should dispose of several players who are comfortable with their earnings and want to run down their contracts.
markyb
“Pleased we won of course but having to put up with all the media and pundit shit again and especially ex player super bonus payments for slagging off”
I know exactly what you mean.
Does any other club have the abundance of ex players we have, always ready willing and able to slag us off? I’ve lost count of the amount of times one of our ex heroes, who we loved and adored, not only slags off the club, the team and the players, but actively advise our players to leave if they want to win anything.
A cursory look around the web I found these headlines.
‘If I was Aubameyang, I would leave’ – Striker should quit ‘average’ Arsenal, claims ex-Gunner Petit (Thanks Manu)
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is the latest star name to consider a move away from Arsenal because the club are not competing for major trophies and have a “decision-making policy problem”, says Charlie Nicholas. (No more than Liverpool did but where were their ex players Like you Charlie?)
Thierry Henry: How can I tell Aubameyang to stay at Arsenal when I left? (FFS Henry, everybody leaves. feeble excuse)
It’s time to leave Arsenal! Captain Van Persie warned by Ibrahimovic that if he wants trophies he has to go elsewhere (Obviously not ex Arsenal, but the media will dig anyone up)
Theo Walcott should leave Arsenal after losing first-team spot, says club great Ian Wright. (Not fight for his place then Wright?).
I couldn’t find it but back in the day I remember Ian Wright advising Henry to leave.
Despite a dismal trophy haul and finishes of 3rd, 4th, 2nd, 7th, 6th, 8th, 7th, 2nd and 6th during Gerrard’s last 9 years at Liverpool, I don’t recall EVER hearing an ex Liverpool player, or anyone else for that matter, advising him to leave Liverpool if he wants to win a PL title.
On leaving Liverpool in 2015 Gerrard even said he would refuse to ever play against Liverpool, that’s how much he loves them. All credit to him. Can you imagine him slagging Liverpool off like our lot do us? Puts our lot to shame.
Despite Spurs abysmal trophy haul and no title for over 50 years, where’s all the ex spuddies telling Kane to leave if he ever wants to win an egg cup, let alone a title? Even on the rare occasion they do get close they f*** it up, and they call us bottlers.
Don’t get me wrong I admire their loyalty and would love to see something similar from ours. Fat chance.
It’s Man City (Sorry Newcastle it’s all over)
Wilson Herbert: last summer was an all time receord spending spree for Arsenal in the transfer market – and it has given us what is currently the lowest position since
We have also done the other thing the fans wanted – changing the manager – twice. That helped take us down too.
A survey earlier this season showed that there was an inverse relationship between money spent and position from last year to this. The clubs that spent the most had reached lower positions.
Quite simply, unless we can spend at the level of Man City for about five years running, spending is not the way through.
You would have thought we had been thrashed today judging from the post match negative crap from pundits and media alike. Two victories from four away matches in 12 days, one of which was against Man City is not a bad return in my book, yet we are being heartily criticised from all quarters, including most of our ex players turned pundits. Yes we could have done better against Brighton but apart from that we have not done bad.
I do not see too much criticism about Spurs away record which is worse than ours, or about their defence which has conceded the same amount of goals as us, plus of course they stand no chance of any trophies this season, whereas we can still win the FA cup.
I am sure that Arteta will have us firing on all cylinders given a reasonable amount of time so lets try to ignore all the crap that gets thrown in our direction.
I fear Nitram is right and Riley will make us pay for today’s ref performance. It just will not do giving us ‘soft’ penalties.
mick shelly
Many of our ex players are an embarrassment.
Not only are they complicit in this never ending media barrage of negativity, but as I showed above, some of them actively encourage our best players to leave. I just don’t get it.
Lets just take Petit’s latest comments regarding PEA.
Why would he do that?
What did Arsenal or their fans ever do to him to make him even want to do that ?
Even Henry. We loved him. He’s supposed to of loved Arsenal. I just don’t see it when he cant even bring himself to do everything he can to help us keep one of our best players ?
Same with Keown. No attempt to persuade him to stay, just a rant about how he should be stripped of the captaincy if he doesn’t sign
But isn’t funny what he has to say when it comes to other teams stars as with this:
“Harry Kane‘s future remains subject to speculation amid rumours of a transfer to Manchester United, but he should stay at Tottenham Hotspur for now, says Martin Keown”.
Honestly you couldn’t make this s**t up.
The officiating of our match was reasonable and surprising. A yellow card for the kick to Laca’s ankle would not have gone amiss but thank’s for the penalty.
I have no doubt Riley will get some form of revenge meted out to us in the near future but then again it’s nothing new.
Our team is incredible in that they play under such bias without losing hope. We as supporters should also keep our hope despite the various types of advice to players, coach and officials.
COYG and ignore the brain boxes that dont feed you.
From a cursory glance across the drainpipes on line it doesn’t look like the media in general have fallen in line with Talhshites ridiculous claim that Referee Paul Tierney’s performance was “Disgraceful;” “The worst refereeing performance I have ever seen”. Unless I’ve missed it of course.
yes, I accept it was a ‘soft’ penalty but jeeeeez how many soft penalties do we concede, and we don’t hear a word from those muppets at Talkshite?
All the replays show that it was a rash tackle from behind. There was contact. It was a foul. Rest assured if one of our defenders had committed it he would of been slaughtered by TS for it.
So quite the contrary to Talkshites view, as we have all been saying, that was one of the better referee performances we have seen. Well done Mr Tierney I say.
It’s odd though, by and large we do get treated better by referees in the cup games, though not always, the Wigan final springs to mind. 4 good penalty shouts turned down.
I remember a particularly good performance from Michael Oliver up at Old Trafford many years ago, but he got critisised for that and hasn’t refereed us quite the same since, although he is still one of the better referees in my opinion.
I still have my doubts we’ll see much more of Mr Tierney after that though. Naughty boy.