All we hear about at the moment is Wenger’s blaming the referees for every point that Arsenal have lost recently, and there have been quite a few of them I’m afraid to say. I cannot disagree that Mike Dean was at fault for stealing two points off us against bottom-of-the-League West Brom on New Years Eve, but the fact is that we had only taken the lead ourselves 5 minutes before the end of the 90 minutes and that was due to a lucky deflection from Alexis’s free-kick!
Wenger moans about another penalty awarded to Chelsea yesterday, but I can’t help but notice that our defenders were rubbish as usual, and if Alvaro Morata had had his scoring boots on Chelsea would have been out of sight long before that decision.
We have dropped out to sixth in the title race not because of the referees but because we can’t hardly win a game. Let’s look at our last 8 League games. We have only lost one, but we have only WON two!
This run started against Man United when we made disastrous defensive errors and out of 33 shots on goal we scored only once. That has continued in all the following games and in fact we have scored 12 and conceded 12 in those 8 games, due to misfiring strikers and awful defending.
When Wenger was asked last night (after the usual rant about the referee) if he was frustrated by being in 6th place in the table, he replied: “That is very frustrating, I agree with you. We have to look at ourselves as well, but still, I think it was a great football game and when you look recently our performances have been top quality. The regret we have is that we have not the results that we could have had. Certainly that is part of our problem, but as well on the other side, you have to say that we have not been gifted this luck.”
The performances have been ‘top quality’? With 2 wins out of 8? Are the points we dropped in the other 6 games just down to referees decisions? I think not.
Wenger’s rants after every game is deflecting criticism where it is due. The reason we are down in 6th place is because our strikers are not scoring and the defenders are not defending. Maybe we should talk about that instead of referees after every game?
Darren N
no, but 4 wins out of 8 would be better, especially w a chelsea win & win on the road, I just want what we deserve, the problem is, the 4 pts lost would put us 3 pts above spuds w a game in their hand, thats a big change, and a point behipool rather than 5, for 4th.
Best comment so far from what I have read 🙂
Wenger could have done better tactically but winners are teams that can win ugly, like an ugly 1-0 against WBA.
Arsenal are not winners yet but decisions like those penalties make the gap look larger than it really is IMO.
I do believe that the def is only missing one commanding quality CB, a CB that knows how to defend rather than play football and a leader. An Adams or Sol Campbell. They would cut the errors out in Mustafi and would guide Chambers and Holding much better than a flustered Mustafi or a quite Kos, Kos is brilliant but not a leader.
Not talking about other areas here 😛
I do think if we got VVD then our def would look miles better, that is how close our def is to being sorted but Wenger likes ball players and not ball winners. Campbell becomes more of a example of what Wenger needs, to pinch a top CB that hasn’t been taught to play over win, our def needs that mixture.
i watched sir alex win ugly for years, 1-0 win in the 97 minute, over and over. 3 pts is 3 pts, if you claw back, take a lead at WBA, and lose to hand hand ball thats no wheres near a hand ball, thats just wrong. i want thepoints, i am not here for the sake of beating up wenger when he is right, i care about arsenal,
Wenger is always unlucky. I am surprised he didn’t say that Cech almost saved the penalty kick.
Agree we should fix first our problems
First of these problems should be replacing the manager.
I think he has been given more than enough chances…
Hey Admin, when you are repeating topics over and over can I repeat oneof my last posts from yesterday? Ok? Thank you:
It is very sad that Arsene Wenger in his post match interview said the same shit about injustice in the world (cosed by evil refs) as some people on this forum minutes before his interview.
btw
Mike Dean IS moron, and JustArsenal IS good blog/forum. I just think you Admin dnt have to post so much. Then is always a danger of repeating and same discusions and rants are flowing thru various posts/articles… although I know you need clicks 🙂
This is so true. Good as this article is, it has been said virtually word for word already. I congratulated Darren N’s almost twin article he wrote and I do again now . But will not be doing so a third time.
The table tells the truth. We are 6’th, and it should be obvious to most people, that we are leaking too many goals. Just like last year, the year before, the year before that…..
Basically, the “Wenger disease”, that we have had for so many years.
Because we leak goals and because we lack steel and a winner’s culture, we are also again loosing out in the direct matches against the other top clubs. We have won one only one of the matches against the top clubs, so it may have been very entertaining at times, but it gets us nowhere.
Excuse me, Admin. What does one need to do to have your comments published?
Refereeing decisions are not entirely to blame for our predicament but they are not irrelevant. We were winning comfortably against Watford until the ref gave Richarlison a penalty when he and Bellerin were challenging normally for the ball. Against Man City, after admittedly a poor first half display, the ref gave Sterling a penalty after a legitimate shoulder charge from Monreal and then allowed an absurd offside goal. Against Man U, after a disastrous start, the ref refused us penalties when Lacazette was grabbed around the neck by Rojo and Welbeck was clearly tripped. Against West Brom, the ref awarded a penalty when Gibbs hit Chambers’ hand at point blank range. In the Chelsea match Bellerin slightly touched Hazard’ s boot but did not really impede him and certainly didn’t catch him on the shin, which Hazard was clutching when he went down. The only piece of luck we have got was when the ref failed to award a penalty when Mustafi took out Rodriguez when we played West Brom at home. All told I’d say that refereeing decisions have cost us around five points.
You don’t have to call a dog a bad name to hang him. Hate Wenger all you want. But he is not responsible for the inconsistencies/incompetence of the English refs.
If half of the attention given to bashing Arsene Wenger had been given to tell the FA, the media and the pgmob that the refs should clean up their act, we would be having better quality of officiating now.
Or are the refs more human than the rest of us? Are they so good that they are beyond reproach and therefore, untouchable?
Who, apart from themselves do the quality control, and regulate them?
Football is a multi-billion pound per season milk cow. Are we saying that they are immune from corruption?
Arsenal have had a problem to score for a while now. Not scoring also emboldens the opposition and somehow the results are worse. we brought in Lacazette and withdrew Sanchez from the duties he was doing just Ok. we should have found a formula to have both of them share the duties…1 centre forward just does not do it for me
3 defenders can work if we get more accomplished personnel. I think we should tweak our system…and thats what I’m not sure wenger can really accomplish. He loves comfort zones
Welcome to Arsenal, Konstantinos Mavropanos !!!
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is Arsenal’s first choice to replace Alexis Sanchez if the Chilean joins Manchester City, according to Sky in Italy.
Ha ha ha
No, 2 wins in 8 games is AFC fault as a whole.
Manager for tactics, subs, motivating players from 1st min and coaching.
Players for not performing 110% for every min they have been on the pitch.
Board for not acting swifter in the ‘catalyst for change’.
Many reasons so to blame it just on the refs would be foolish.
However to ignore the refs would be equally foolish.
They have cost us points, they have contributed towards this current situation for results, they are not blameless.
Refs do need to answer for their actions and I do agree with Wenger when he says that refs should be at a higher standard than they are now, I also agree with Wenger about VAR technology and question why it is taking so long to get introduced in an industry that is worth billions.
There is a silver lining in every dark cloud and I think Arsenogenie and Steven are that silver lining. Do some people not see reality simply because they hate somebody called Arsene Wenger? Steven has given a list of indisputable acts of injustice against Arsenal which would add to over ten points at the minimum. Is that little? I wish we had many on this site who were objective like Steven. Must we be cheated because we have let in many goals. Must we be denied a penalty because we have not scored many goals? It is still very possible for Arsenal to make top four but that will only happen if the unfair treatment stops. The only way this will stop is through our concerted protests on websites like this one rather than bashing Wenger because it has become some people’s pastime. Mourinho is now in his second year at Man U and is nowhere near winning EPL even though many on this website had tipped him to win it this season. Jurgen Kopp whom many of our fans were clamouring for might even leave Liverpool without winning any serious trophy. Things aren’t as easy as many on this website tend to think. Let us fight for justice to be done during games rather than concentrating on anti-Wenger rants which will not bring us any points.
David Rusa, I appreciate the point you are trying to make but you are naive if you think any supposed unfair treatment (there is none IMO) would be halted by our concerted effort on this website.
If this website had any effect on football matters Wenger would have been fired already because most here want him gone.