The Arsenal boss was given a three-game touchline ban today for basically calling the referee a cheat (although the FA used the words ‘questioning the integrity of the referee’) when Mike Dean gave a penalty to West Brom in the dying minutes of the League clash at West Brom.
Wenger has absolutely no regrets for his actions and carried on complaining in the referees fressing room after the game and in his after match interviews.
The Frenchman even repeated the offence this week when he accused Eden Hazard of diving and accusing the ref of awarding a penalty against the Gunners against the evidence, and just about every article since has been about referees decisions, rather than discussing the actual football.
In my opinion this is unacceptable. When I was young we were taught that the referee’s decision is final, and no amount of arguing or screaming will make a blind bit of difference and should not be tolerated in the slightest. Let’s face it; Every decision is going to upset one side or the other so there will always be complaints. This should simply not be allowed and not tolerated either, so the FA are quite right to keep punishing Wenger until he shows some RESPECT to the man in the middle.
It is far from being an easy job and the problem was so bad on the pitch a few years ago that the FA introduced the RESPECT campaign and added rules to punish players that crowded the referees or abused them in public. There are good reasons for this, as millions of young impressionable football-playing kids around the world have their own respect for some of these players and their teams. If they see that it is okay to abuse referees from top footballers than this could cause them to copy their actions when they play their own minor games.
Nowadays it is amazing that anyone would even want to be a ref and be subject to the vitriol and hatred directed at them by players and supporters alike. If Wenger makes it clear that it is okay to abuse the referee then what chance do the refs have of controlling the players on the pitch.
Referees should be treated like judges (which is what they are) and if a ref makes a decision (any decision, even if you don’t like it) then you must accept it and simply get on with the game. This abuse is becoming much more common and should be stamped out before it permeates every level of the game and we will simply wake up one day and there will be nobody around that will even want the job….
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