By Walter Broeckx
Well this is a better day to be a Gooner. A narrow but fully deserved 1-0 win over a team that came for only thing: destroy whatever football is if possible. We have seen another exhibit of time wasting and bending the rules till it get ridiculous.
And all this with a ref who was very very very very very very inept. Maybe it is just karma that the goal for Arsenal looked one that was against the rules. Because I think that Arteta might have been offside when he first headed against the crossbar. Because for the one split second Arsenal bend the rules (not that being offside is really bending the rules) QPR lost the game. But I am waiting for the referee reviewer on this because maybe there is an angle where you can see the full goal line and maybe there was another defender somewhere along the line (the one that attempted to stop Arshavin maybe?)
But the amount of time wasting we have seen was again unseen before. And our friend the ref? He stood there and …did nothing. Now of course it could be that he didn’t noticed the time wasting. But then I can only ask myself: how on earth did he get there? That is something that as a ref you should be aware that it can happen and then you have to act and stop it. I have seen a few refs doing this very well this season (Clattenburg just to name one) so one can assume that a ref in the PL must have heard of the notion of time wasting before. This ref on the day seemed to have never heard of it and didn’t do anything about it.
Another thing he didn’t seem to know was that when a free kick has to be taken the wall has to be 9.15 meters away or 10 yards. And this has to be the distance WHEN THE BALL IS KICKED! Because on almost every occasion the ref put the wall at about the correct distance. But then he allowed the wall to come forward again and so on a few occasions the wall was at some 6 meters distance away from the ball. And thus making it impossible to produce a decent free kick.
Surely a ref in the PL has to be aware of the phenomena of a wall encroaching by taking little steps over the ground without lifting their feet. An invisible moonwalk one could say. How on earth can a ref not notice this? How on earth can he not notice that the wall is no longer in the position he put it in the first place???? How on earth can a PL ref let this go so many times? Okay it can happen once. But twice means you are not paying attention. But almost all the time…it means that you are not suited as a ref in the PL.
And then we have not just the time wasting from QPR but the time wasting by …the ref himself. I think he was the only person in the ground to not notice the fact that one team (QPR) was doing all it could to stop the game flow. And I think he was the only person in the ground to not notice the fact that one team (Arsenal) was doing all it can to keep the game at a high tempo. Of course he noticed this. And if not: just another example of hem not being fit to be a ref in the PL.
On almost any occasion when Arsenal had a free kick close to the QPR penalty area he used over one minute of game time. First he had to discuss with almost every player on the field what was going on, what they would have for dinner later this evening, the colour of the grass (which was rather green), it took ages before he even started to put the wall in the correct place.
And then he had to chat with the players in the wall about some facts that we cannot know. But I surely hope he didn’t tell them that they could not move forward to the ball. It looked like that but surely… then he should have punished it. But he didn’t. So what was he wasting Arsenals, yours and my time? It just took ages to get everyone ready and by the time the Arsenal players could consider taking the free kick the wall was standing just a few yards away again. Time and time again.
Missing it once can be excused. Missing it twice raises questions. Missing it all the time shows that either you are completely unfit to be a ref in the PL or….
So he was inept when it came to time wasting from QPR. He was inept when it came to putting the wall at the right distance. He was inept by wasting time when Arsenal wanted to take a free kick. I leave the rest of his performance to the ref reviewer but this was something that made my ref blood boil.
And then to add to the insult of being a poor….or was it a biased ref, he did something extraordinary at the end of the 90 minutes. Now I know that when a team has wasted a lot of time and has bent the rules that if they lose when the time is up I will not allow them extra time. If QPR wanted to equalize of win the game, they should have hurried up a bit in the 90 minutes. And now with all the time wasting they got rewarded with 5 minutes of extra time to rescue a point.
And it was QPR that had wasted all the time! And yet the ref gave them 2 extra minutes outside of the more or less mandatory for the substitutes. I think that made it clear that he was a man with not that noble intentions.
All his failures and all those failures going against Arsenal gave me the impression that he was once again trying to do his best to step in the footsteps of Dean in the previous seasons. Mr. Taylor you really had a bad performance and all those things going against Arsenal didn’t look good.
But at the end of the day we spoiled your party. And if you really didn’t do it on purpose it is time to look at your performance on TV again. And see how you did all to take the speed out of the game, let the wall move closer without stopping it and not punishing the time wasting. Time to take your courses in your hands, time to try to the feeling of the game. Because on the things I mentioned you were more than poor.
Only you know it was just being inept or being biased. If the first : do something about it and let the PGMOL do something about it. If the latter: shame on you. And you are starting to get a bit of history on those things I’m afraid to say.
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The books…
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- “The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal”: crowd behaviour at the early matches
The sites…
- Referee Decisions - just what are the refs up to this season?
- The weight loss programme: The only guaranteed wayto stay fit
- Looking for a terraced house in Northamptonshire?
- For all your football betting try these Bookmakers with free bets.
- Arsenal History Society blog
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- How the Guardian newspaper made a total mockery of the Arsenal AGM
- Match Review: Martin Atkinson – Arsenal Vs Chelsea (1 – 2) [29/09/2012]
- Arsenal AGM report: Wenger gives an interesting review
- Need for speed
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@Walter, I suppose you’re implying I’d send you abusive mail and am posing as someone else on here. I don’t do that sort of thing. I detest people who do. I may disagree with some people on here but I’ve been exceptionally moderate despite the rather random insults I’ve endured.
Rupert,
“a manager who holds the unenviable record of going seven years without a trophy. No other Arsenal manager can claim that”.
George Morrell went 7 years without a trophy between 1908-15 while the club were Woolwich Arsenal and he also has the unenviable record of being the only manager to be in charge of an Arsenal relegation. He remained in charge after the demotion season, and was the first manager at Highbury.
Mark
@Rupert cook
Who was a great player before he came to Arsenal under Wenger?
Interesting that you name Jelavic as a player Arsene/Arsenal should’ve purchased.
By your own very high standards, should Everton have sacked David Moyes for his failure to bring silverware to their club during his ten year tenure?
@Mark, Wenger’s beaten his record I’m afraid.
Everton have no money, we do. Considering the restrictions Moyes works under he’s done quite well.
Considering the restrictions Wenger works under he has done extraordinary well. Everton in general is battling against teams like Sunderland, Fulham, ….
We are battling against MU and the big money spenders Chelsea and Man City. 3 teams that can outspend us just by snapping with their fingers
@Tasos. Henry was a great player already but Wenger saw his potential. Pires, Vieira, Petit, Overmars, Anelka, all great players, Wenger may well have improved them. But recently his talent for finding those players has dwindled.
@Rupert cook
Moyes has won nothing for ten years and yet he has had a similar budget to Wenger in many of those seasons.
You wreak of double standards.
@Walter, I agree to an extent. And we don’t know for sure what restrictions Wenger does work under. Gazidis says he has money to spend but does he? But you have to wonder if Wenger couldn’t have found better players than Bendtner, Gervinho, Djourou, Santos, to name a few for the same money.
No Tasos Moyes has not had a similar budget.
@Rupert cook
If you genuinely believe all those players were great “before” joining Arsenal/Arsene then I question your definition of the term great.
Henry was a flop at Juve, used mainly as winger if at all.
Vieira barely got a game during his time at AC Milan.
Petit was used as left back at Monaco.
Anelka was all about potential, very very far from greatness at the time.
Overmars was considered a crock before joining the club.
As I said Wenger may have improved them. And yes he got the best out of them. But where is his talent for finding those sort of players now? Some managers do lose their way. It happens. I hope Wenger can become the manager he was ten years ago because something is missing.
Rupert,
You did say “a manager who holds the unenviable record of going seven years without a trophy. No other Arsenal manager can claim that”; not who had the longest reign, or period within a reign, without a trophy.
Mark
“MAY” have improved them.
LOL
You’re comedy gold Rupert.
My apologies Mark but Wenger holds the record now.
Thanks Tasos, glad you laughed.
Laughed at rather than with.
@Tasos, I’m used to it. I’ve been telling people we won’t win another trophy under Wenger since 2007. They laugh and yet every year their laughter gets a little harder to hear.
i loved the discussion and to be fair Rupert did hold his own. he does have a valid point though….but more pressing matter is that have u all heard the news as to who is the official of our game against Manure? yes you all guessed right….SPIDER [Web] MAN….. so now we know what to expect.
@Rupert
I have spent enough time on you.
It has taken away from the real debate on here.
Thank you Gouresh. And bad news about the ref.
What is the significance of who the referee is next Saturday ?
I stay very far away, in Uganda, but on Saturday when I watched the Arsenal vs QPR match, I got the impression that may be the Ref did not want Arsenal to win. It was just my view, a home team not getting the 50:50 decisions, doing all he could to frustrate us etc. So my worry is now on ManU game, if they can cheat rich Chelsea, wait what they will do to us come Saturday.
@Walter
This debate should really be about referees especially those who have permitted time wasting and have not carried out their job properly.
What we have is rubert from the AAA sewer using the site as a platform to go on & on & on knifing AW. He is obviously getting some form of perverted thrill out of wasting everyone’s time – I suppose that is slightly relevant to the title. However, I don’t think we are any obligation to provide him with a site to continually, repetitively and boringly air his anti Wenger views. I have quite enjoyed using his comments against him without entering into a debate, but, he must now be getting close to an “oik” if not a red card for repeated fouling?
@Stevo433
Spider [Web] Man, loves all the other clubs sooooo much that he will do everything possible to make them loose against Manure!!! it’s alleged that he is on their payroll…..opps slip of the tongue!
@stevo Mike Dean
So what your saying is, if they appointed a fair and impartial referee on Saturday,
Arsenal would actually stand a chance ? Ok, thanks , I understand now.
Had a feeling Chelski would not take that lying down…accusations of racist and inappropriate language against a ref, whatever the outcome , West London’s finest are not exactly making friends and influencing influential people here. If they have a just cause and that really happened as they claim, they have every right to take this further…but if they do not…expect some very strange decisions against them, maybe the PGMOL might start leaving us alone and target Chelsea? Racist language is clearly unacceptable, but if this ref is done for ..say industrial language, will this end up with refs taking zero tolerance against players swearing?
@Stevo
Here you go:
http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/24240
Chelski is targeting the wrong guy. Clattenburg is not to blame for the Bridge debacle – his only blame is that his backbone eventually gave up to the Fergie-inflicted pressure – but what can you expect from guys with so much cleverness and class. They obviously didn’t bother to read last year’s referee reviews. Oh well. Rant over.
@Florian
You are correct that Clattenburg has eventually succumbed to pressure, but the trouble Chelsea has is proving that old Red Nose is responsible; consequently they cannot go for Red Nose so they have had to go for Clattenburg. However, if Clattenburg did make racist remarks – that itself is not acceptable and cannot be let go.
Further, Chelsea will have more difficulty pursuing Clattenburg’s incompetent performance as a referee. The PGMOL seems to be answerable to no one. This is the crux of the problem, we have seen what the refs have done to Arsenal over the years, but, as the PGMOL has become more blatant in its activities fans from many clubs can see the combined Red Nose & Riley influence on the PL results – but that in itself is not sufficient proof of – what – a fixed league? So lets hope fallout from the Chelsea complaint starts the unraveling of the totally incompetent and non-democratic PGMOL.
@Bjtgooner im waiting for another debacle next saturday and i trust Dean will provide one but wont be as bad as Clattenburg’s. Dean knows how to keep a low profile, he is the master of doing that.
@Mahdain
I agree, Dean will be a problem, also as you point out the difficulty with Dean is he is very cunning and subtle, he will try to screw us but he will not be as obvious as e.g. Dowd.
However, lets remember we managed to beat Spurs last year with Dean as ref, so lets hope our guys hit top form.
Also, something bad going on behind the scenes with the double talker!
@bjt
Totally agree that racism is unacceptable and should be punished. I guess I needed to be more clear in the sense that to me it seems more of a counterfeit revenge that Chel$ki put up, so what I’m really questioning is the truthfulness of their statements. Since I have no proof of that though, I’ll stop here.
@Florian
We will just have to wait & see how the Chel$ki complaint pans out. I suspect that as Clattenburg has appeared to be one of Riley’s less favoured refs, Riley may well sacrifice him to try and make the rest of the PGMOL look sanitised. But, if Clattenburg did make racist remarks he deserves to be punished.
I agree with your thought that Chelsea would like to complain about Clattenburg’s decisions but under the present set up they can’t, so this has given added momentum to complain about the racist remarks.
A very strange situation that is Chelsea clattenberg. The outcome will be a ref, who I at least thought was one of the better ones overall….and despite decisions at the weekend….being sacked, or Chelsea being completely and utterly discredited. There are those within the Chelsea set up who clearly lack class, but would they take such a risk over a groundless accusation?
In general, I have admired clattenberg as a ref….with the odd exception, but must admit, I fear for him at this moment, but as has been said, IF anything racist has gone on, that is unacceptable whatever the pressure or provocation….and boy did he look like a man under pressure during that game.
About Clattenberg we will be reviewing the game of course.
but alas not with the sound and the words spoken.
Could it be that he knew he had to make sure United would win this game to get the top games again?
Having only seen short highlights I must say that the sending off of Ivanovic was spot on as it was a foul on a player on his way to goal. If it was a foul and not a dive as with Young …well you never know.
The second yellow card for Torres can also be defended imo. It looked to be a dive and thus a yellow was correct. The first foul from Torres looked already close to a red card imo.
The goal was offside but this is more down to a mistake from the assistant so one cannot blame him directly.
But of course what was not shown in the highlights will tell us more.
@Walter
Look forward to the review, especially regarding Rooney’s situation, there was a suggestion that Clattenburg chickened out of sending him off – so it will be interesting to see your take on this.