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.