The theory that the bigger clubs generally get the benefit of the decisions of the referee and other officials is a hard one to prove. And when you are a fan of one of those big clubs like Arsenal you will tend to feel that a contentious decision should go our way anyway.
I personally think that the theory does hold water, even though you get times like with Chelsea and Jose Mourinho last season when a manager goes out of his way to infuriate the officials so much that they start going the other way and turning down good penalty shouts.
However I also feel that for some reason, almost every referee that Arsenal have had in the Premier League season has been neutral at best and has actually been hard on Arsenal more often than not. We seem to get yellow cards for fouls that our opponents are allowed to do all day long, such as happened to Coquelin yesterday.
And I have lost track of the times that Giroud has had defenders all over him and got nothing while if he uses his strength and wins a tussle the whistle is heard. I have already written about Martin Atkinson nearly costing us the game against Leicester but it got even worse from the refs yesterday.
After beating the Foxes the ideal result for us in the later game was a draw and it was heading that way until that crazy decision by Clattenburg to give the spuds a penalty. That ended up costing us second place in the table and kept Tottenham´s title momentum going. Once Leicester looked like serious contenders the decisions started to go their way as well.
Anyone would think that for some reason the men in black do not want Arsenal to win it. What do you think Gooners?