There has been a lot of talk and comparisons made ahead of the return trip of Arsenal to Anfield where Liverpool produced one of the performances of last season when they simply blew a naive Gunners team away. And although there are likely to be a fair few changes in both teams starting line-ups, the man in charge wil be the same.
And that 5-1 defeat is not the only time that the Gunners have suffered when Michael Oliver has been the referee. Arsene Wenger has been less than impresseed with the young ref’s officiating on a few occasions, most recently with his failure to add on much extra time despite Tottenham’s time wasting at the Emirates.
I am not blaming Oliver for our Anfield defeat last season, even though their early opener was offside, but he did award us a penalty. However, Arsenal’s Premier League record with him is not great; just two wins from the nine games, which does suggest that he is either unlucky for us, does not really like us or does not referee games in the way that would suit us better.
Having said all that though, we did win the Community Shield in August with Mr. Oliver in charge and we did win the FA cup semi-final against Wigan last season, even though we needed extra time and penalties to do so. So OLiver has presided over games that led to our two recent trophy successes and hopefully we can have better luck in the EPL with him tomorrow.
Lets keep the faith and pray that he calls it strait down the middle, and keep it fair! Coyg!
is this an excuse for failure?
Even the fa is always behind it….why give us certain referees for certain games and certain games against teams we perfom poorly against like: 50th unbeaten game against manure with their fan as a referee and then wenger’s 1000th game against a mourinho he’s never won?????
don’t get me wrong, I’m happy whenever we win a match but I just feel like there will be something empty in a liverpool win this weekend. I don’t know what it is but after the fa cup final I thought I would be beyond ecstatic but I was just really happy, I mean we’d played good teams on our way to the final but out of liverpool, everton and tottenham these were teams that over the wenger era we’d have expected to beat and had done pretty consistently. I wanted to know we could challenge the best to win, and I just don’t think there is as much appeal in a victory against this liverpool team as there was last year, just feel like I’m waiting for that game where we turn up away from home against a big club and show them we can play and win
that just means it will be harder to win…refs are part of the statistics whether we like it or not…and we obviously struggle under this guy. So it will definitely make it harder as we won’t be getting the rub of the green with this chap.
This is one of the most important matches of the season for me. We’ve put a few wins together but must win this to stay in touch. Southampton even jumped up again with a good win over Everton.
We have a very tough derby with West Ham, who are riding high and another game with Southampton not that far away. So this is a must win or those teams will believe in their chances even more.
So lets take the ref out of this game and score several goals so we aren’t at the mercy of a last minute penalty from a ref who is more than likely to award one against us.
I want lots of goals! By us!
Let the players ref themselves.
When we were kids it worked 🙂
Bad decisions happen. More-so when you are playing bad football. If you are on top of your game the ref’s errors will be marginal.
You are right… but what about the tight games which are usually against other good sides. I dont go for all this even its self out bull, unless someones keeping count there has to be a loser. You only have to look at the amount times manu used to get favor.
OLIVER is jus making up for the fa cup final Arsenal won ,sometimes in that game it looked like too many small decision went against hull that shouldn’t have n 75% games not against big teams tho we won wt him in charge ,the only big team that failed to win against us wt oliver is man city
I completely disagree with this article, Michael Oliver is actually one of the best PL referees; I would be far more worried if Anthony Tyler or some of the others were refereeing because they seem to be completely random in their decisions.
That ref for Aston Villa vs Man United gave a red in the 60th minute without a single yellow beforehand and when the tackle was obviously late but there was no malicious intend or studs later Blackett did basically the same thing (less robust but with studs showing) and he got the deserved yellow but then the consistency is nonexistent.
The referee committee is a complete joke; they don’t analyse the performances of their own referees at all yet they protect them so there is never any improvement. Every player apart from the captain and vice-captain should be booked the second they surround the ref (as well as invisible yellows which Sanchez does) but every ref should be scrutinised after every match and the worst refs should be moved out of the PL every season and replaced. I read a stat somewhere stating that some refs only get 70% of their decisions right, and only 50% of the game changers right… THAT”S UNACCEPTABLE. On that same website it also showed that bias does not in fact even out during a season, Man United DID consistently get more wrong decisions for them over the years and Arsenal did consistently get decisions against them.
If you can’t do it right then simply add video technology into the equation, why not add the tennis idea to football, give each team 3 decisions that they can instantly review that will be added to extra time anyway but will prevent reds, offside goals, foul goals and anything else that dramatically changes a game.
Tidan 2,, Thus a great idea surely….. Like Palace had a genuine goal ruled offside yesterday…. The linesman was fooled…. And that gave City a wake up call,, next thing – they are punishing the dejected Palace…. I just pray the ref will b fair n we get a result… Why not hit Liverpool where it hurts most.. Like, we beat them to Sanchez n today we hit them back for that 5 nil or is 5 – 1 spanking… Coz that was a soft soft penalty…. Go fo it Gunners……