Arsenal all-but ended their bid to become Premier League champions for the first time in 12 years this weekend, dropping to 13 points behind with only six matches remaining. The weekend was not as clear-cut as it seemed however, with a number of refereeing decisions affecting their disappointing weekend.
West Ham’s hero of the weekend Andrew Carroll, who scored an emphatic hat-trick at Upton Park, is adjudged to have been lucky to have been on the pitch to bag any of those strikes. Former professional ref Dermot Gallagher claims he should have been given a second booking for his clash with Gabriel, where he elbowed the defender in the face, and should have been sent to the stands.
The 58 year-old former official said: “Carroll is lucky here. There were a number of incidents where people were saying he could have been sent off. Of all of those incidents this was the one, he would have had no arguments. This is not a red card offence but it was reckless and Carroll took a big chance doing what he did. His eyes were on the ball though, so that is what went in his favour. Despite that, he was lucky because he took a big risk while on a yellow card in a game of that nature. However, it proved to be a risk worth taking.”
This wasn’t the only clash to go unpunished for the English forward, and he ends up leaving the stadium with the matchday ball.
It wasn’t the only decision to go against us however, with West Bromwich Albion also denied a penalty against Manchester City, in the match that ended up being 2-1 to fourth-placed City.
Gallagher claimed that Sky Blues’ defender Mangala goes through Sandro in the box in order to stop the incoming cross from Sessegnon, and should have been punished with a penalty kick.
The referee added: “Mangala goes through the back of Sandro. Mangala can’t play the ball. At some point during a game there are situations where players cannot win the ball, and this was one of those for Mangala. He has had to go through the player and I think that is a penalty.”
Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be, and for those who say that the decisions tend to equal themselves out throughout a season, should take a hard look at Leicester’s favouring this year.
With a fair share of the penalties and decisions, how much closer to the top do you think we’d be?
When are we gonna stop making excuses and playing the blame game?
its a given we’re going to have refs and injuries against us each season.
lets learn from the past.
plan for it by having a squad deeper than most.
spend the money to get that squad.
ditch the english core that have let us down so horribly this year.
wenger : stop being so goddam faithful to your players: they aren’t kids; they aren’t going to be paying you back. look at rvp, nasri, fabregas.
Nasri didn’t want to go, he was promised that he wouldn’t be sold in the same window as Cesc by Wenger and then he was told by the board that he had been sold, Nasri blames Silent Stan for wanting to sell him for a guaranteed profit that they may lose if we fail to get CL football… £25mil.
As for spending money, why would Silent Stan spend more than required to keep us in CL football? He doesn’t care about ‘championships’, he has publicly said that already.
Wenger didn’t do transfers when he 1st came, that was Dein.
Wenger done transfers for a short period after Dein, breaking Arsenals transfer record.
Gazidis was hired to take over Deins roles, this includes transfer negotiations.
Our defense bottled it against westham, so why complain about the ref, when we shot ourselves in the foot?
Referees make bad decisions once in a while but winning the PL is about getting the most points through the season. In January we were at the Top of the leader board and we bottled it. It was a combination of not having a Vardy, Kane, healthy Aguero type striker and just bottling it defensively
You moan about the CF… and I am not debating the quality of CF, assume you are right for this thought experiment.
Welbz started because Giroud is just being useless on the pitch, Welbz wasn’t the CF that Wenger initially wanted so if the board had gotten a better CF then you wouldn’t have had what you posted to say…
Wenger has openly said that if he stayed at home then Welbz wouldn’t be here now.
Wenger was more inclined towards a 12 month loan, maybe Wenger wanted a different CF who was better but the board wouldn’t pay it as they was also buying Alexis so Wenger was hoping to get a top CF next time round?
12 month loan would have meant that Wenger could see if Welbz could be the man and if not then he goes back to UTD and Wenger could have gone for a TOP cf… but now we have Giroud, Welbz and Theo.
did wenger write that article!?
LOL 😀
It was Silent Stan who written it but Wenger released it 😛
I do believe Arsenal are refereed differently to other sides. Like when a team which cant play attractive possession based football uses their physical and height advantage over us, that’s fair enough, but then when we give a physical display out ourselves it is like the refs are thinking, no we should know better, and we shouldn’t have to rely on these tactics.
Looking at the season as a whole, you’d think that if we performed in the second half of the season how we did in the first half, then we’d be in with a shout for the title. Wrong, we lost four games out of our first 19, and three draws. Second half so far we lost three games, and drew five I think it is. So we dropped 18pts in our first half, 19pts dropped from the second half season so far. That’s only one point the difference, before WHam we were actually on course for a better finale. Still games to go of course, but very poor reading none the less. Somehow, we fooled ourselves into believing that we dropped off the pace, when in fact, we were going pretty steady.
West Ham had a goal wrongly disallowed.
Wrong decisions against are remembered for a long time. Wrong decisions in our favour are very soon forgotten, in the case of the author of this article, less than three days.
I agree jonm, the real fault was with the players, they let the manager and fans down.
We started so well and that is what they are capable off, they are at fault for not maintaining the superiority, Wenger couldn’t run onto the pitch and play…. and thank any footballing god he can’t, he wasn’t a great player 😛
In hindsight we can say Gab and Ospina shouldn’t have started BUT they had done well in the previous game and deserved a chance to continue, they should have been good enough to deal with a WHU team.
Normally I think Wenger is a bit clueless when it comes to subs but I think Wenger done all he could, he wanted to win and he got as much firepower on that he could, throwing caution to the wind in attempt to get the 3 points.
I can’t help but wonder who Wenger wanted as a CF when he had Welbz bought for him, not meaning to disrespect Welbz but he isn’t the CF we need. I like him but he isn’t banging them in…
How many others was bought and Wenger wouldn’t have agree’d to it?
Losing David Dein from the board was the turning point for Arsenal, Wenger and Dein built a great relationship and it shown the results with Wenger getting all the credit, now he is getting all the blame.
Maybe Dein had more influence over Wenger than initially thought, maybe Dein was good at seeing the mental strength in people? If Wenger was clueless on that side and Gazidis is clueless on that as well then… blind leading the blind comes to mind…
Thought it was 2 and not 1…
Wenger in large part is responsible for most of our woes as a club, the board will take a fair share of the blame and most definitely the players too…..personally I also strongly believe fans like the writer of this jumped up article should cop a share of the blame too…you know them, the rose tinted spectacle wearing fans who will go the length of the earth to find excuses for what is basically a squad not mentally, physically and psychologically good enough to win the big trophies out there, the kind of fans who are quick to label rational realistic fans “sell out n plastic fans” just because these fans looked at our chances without the encumbrances of emotion….they are the fans who turned supporting Arsenal F.C to a religion, if you are a true fan you are just meant to believe and have faith we can win things, even if all rational thought and actions and the reality on the ground states otherwise….Flamini up against Dembele, sure we can thrash them, Giroud up against Aguero, sure we can win it, Per up against Alderwelder, easy for us…..if its not b the ref, its the kick.off time, if not that them its cos we play too many matches, or we travelled too much, or we get no resting time, or too much physicality….they will Always, always find excuses for what is in essence a squad lacking the essentials to win……pathetic!!!
Squad has players who was bought, not all those buys are Wengers choice, Wenger said Welbz wouldn’t be here if he stayed at home.
For me that is more likely to be down to the fact Wenger had someone else in mind but was given Welbz and told to make do.
Who else has been bought that Wenger didn’t choose but he will not push the blame onto anyone else?
Wenger may not be the best tactician BUT we got to recognize that Wenger has people to deal with, not all of those people are mentally strong enough and Wenger isn’t going to make it worse for them by saying that.
What would be ideal is Silent Stan to sell to Usmanov and then Dein coming back to the club and dealing with transfers again, he was a legend at getting players that was going to be good enough.
We can blame Wenger for not getting players mentally good enough but then we can blame ‘god’ for all the war in the world, what good will it do?
The ref didn’t help, you could say it cost us but at the same time we was saved by the linesman, the real fault is with the players for not doing better, that was a team good enough to beat a west ham team if all our players played well.
I wonder if all the fans are going to stop calling for Gab to start over Per now?