Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal
Untold Arsenal on Facebook here
By Walter Broeckx, your un-enigmatic ref
Lee Probert was the ref in Wigan today and let’s not waste any time and have a look at his game.
OTHER/CARD: A cross goes to the second post and the Wigan striker tries to score with his hand. The ref doesn’t give anything. No foul and more or all: no yellow card? An attempt to score with your hand is ALWAYS A YELLOW CARD! How is this possible? 0/1 and 0/1
OTHER: Foul on Squillaci and the ref gives nothing. Koscileny stood his ground to prevent worse. 0/1
Nzogbia going to the olympic games in London 2012 in the discipline Art diving
Sorry I cannot give you longer video clips but this is due to some program restriction.
OTHER/PENALTY/CARD/GOAL: Counter from Wigan. Nzogbia goes past Koscielny who for a moment stuck out his leg but retracted it. Nzogbia goes past Koscielny and then throws himself to the ground. The ref who was never impressed with any tumble from an Arsenal player gives a penalty. All the replays clearly show that this was a schwalbe (or a dive as you call it) and nothing else. The fact that Wigan score from this wrong penalty is making things worse. The ref should have booked Nzogbia for his dive. So I only can give him for his situation a 0/1, 0/1, 0/1 and 0/1.
OTHER: The ref refuses to give fouls in favour of Arsenal. This is getting rather ridiculous right now. You can miss one foul, even two but keep missing them in such a consistent way , you have to do it. 0/1
GOAL: Nothing wrong with our first goal 1/1
GOAL: And again nothing wrong with our second goal 1/1
And we go in at half time and the ref has the “honour” to be the first ref since I started this review this season who can go in the dressing room with a score of O % and that is a zero, apart from the two goals we scored.
Let us see if he can improve in the second half.
OTHER: Again the ref gives almost no fouls for Arsenal. This is getting more than ridiculous now. You have to see it to believe it. 0/1
OTHER: This is getting boring but the ref keeps on giving all the advantage to Wigan. This is playing against 12 man. I leave the linesman out for now as they didn’t do much wrong that I could see. 0/1
OTHER/CARD: How, how, how, merry Christmas the ref has seen a foul on Chamakh. But even the dead blind cat from my neighbours had seen this one. And he even gives a card. The ref saves himself from a total embarrassment. 1/1 and 1/1 (followed by a cynical applause)
OTHER/OTHER/CARD: Wilshere comes in between the ball and Nzogbia. Nzogbia brings him down and the ref….gives a foul against Wilshere. Wilshere is not happy about this and is saying something against Nzogbia, who doesn’t like it and gives a headbut against Wilshere. The ref didn’t see it. Oh, what a surprise. What did he see in this game?? But here comes the rescue brigade in the person of Mike Dean (of all persons…) who has seen it and explains this to the ref. Who then sends Nzogbia off. If it wouldn’t have been for Dean Nzogbia would have stayed on the field. 0/1, 0/1 and 1/1 (thanks to Dean this 1)
GOAL: Nothing against the rules with this goal. Hey a good point for the ref. 1/1
PENALTY: Walcott is being tripped by the defender who did not play the ball, he even didn’t came close to the ball. But he clearly caught Walcott on his left foot. This was a clear penalty. But well you can imagine by now how the ref reacts: he gives nothing. 0/1
PENALTY: Nasri fires a free kick and the last defender in the wall jumps up with his hand and smashes the ball away. Now we have seen this given against us this season, and I even agreed with the decision against Cesc in that game. But wait a minute. This is another ref. And this ref hasn’t given us nothing this evening. So he just does what he has done very consistent all evening: give us nothing. But to be honest I had giving up on this ref long before this. 0/1
So what is the final score from this person in his orange shirt on the field:
CARDS: 2/3 (thanks to Mike Dean!)
PENALTY: 0/3
GOAL: 3/4
OTHER: 1/10
Total score: 6/20 (30%) (including Dean)
Total score from Probert himself 5/20 (25%) ( without Dean)
Well we have seen good performances and bad performances before this season but this really, really was one of the worst refs I have seen this season.
And he gets the lowest score I ever had to give in a ref review. I never have seen a ref who was so biased. Even Clattenburg in our last half our against Chelsea was doing a great job as an unbiased ref compared to this. And to think that even Dean saved his skin and I even had to give praise to Dean.
But he was very consistent the ref. He was worthless during the whole game. I really should stop from now on to call him a ref in fact. Because he can be given all kinds of names but please don’t call him a ref. I really don’t want to be called with the same name as this person in orange. Call him a clown in the comment section. Call him what you want but this was a bad night for him and for refs in general. I feel ashamed to wear the same shirt he does.
Or maybe he was happy with the things he has done? Maybe he came on the field with the intent to help Wigan as much as possible? Well he sure done a great job then. But he made a total embarrassment of what a ref should be. He could have worn a Wigan shirt right from the start of the game and then we would have known it from before the game started. Now we had to find out during the game.
Poor, poor, poor, is the only word I can think of Mr. Poorbert. Last night I joked a bit saying that Poorbert was voted Wigan man of the match. He certainly deserved it from their point of view.
And finally is there something wrong with the refs? When we were considered as too weak to have a chance for the title, the refs did a rather good and more neutral job when dealing with most situations. Some better than others, but this was more down to let us say the preferences of certain refs like Webb and others we know who will try to do it all to stop us. But since we been top in the league the level of points from the refs have been dropping considerably.
Also in the Chelsea game when we against all odds (pundit odds of course) took a 3-0 lead the ref suddenly changed his game and tried to help Chelsea in any way he could. (Read my ref review and notice my note after our third goal) This was very visible as I pointed out in my ref review. But now when we could go top of the league joining United and City the ref continued his game plan where Clattenburg had to stop in the Chelsea game. He just gave us absolutely nothing. Is this by accident? Is this some kind of plan?
I really do have some kind of 2007-2008 feeling over this. The season they stole the refs stole the title from us. So FA and EPL and PGMO I will be watching this in the next weeks. I don’t ask refs to give us anything more than we deserve. Just a neutral game is good enough for me and this was not what I have been seeing the last weeks.
Untold untold’s, untold tolds, told untolds, and of course told told’s. We have it all
hi tony,
Of late it is becoming apparent that there should be an age limit-wall to this site? some of the comments are getting embarrassingly personal and off the topic – there also seems to be a problem with pos(T)ers understanding the english used on the site_ should we get some man u or tottenham bloggers to write in the style some people understand- in the spirit of ‘no child left behind’?
It says a lot about these so-called ‘fans’ that, even when it’s so blatantly obvious that the referee has cost us the game, they prefer to attack the players and manager instead.
Having to play again just 48 hours after such a huge game against Chelsea, the changes were inevitable. We all know about the injury problems of RVP, Walcott and Djourou, so it’s absolute no surprise that they were rested. While Nasri, Song and Wilshere have played a lot of football this season and we really need them fit for the remainder of it. And Cesc was of course suspended.
The only change that you could argue with is Eboue coming in at LB for Clichy, but with Gibbs out we cannot afford to then lose Clichy as well. For the same reason that we cannot afford to risk losing Djourou while Vermaelen is still missing.
In the end, despite all the changes we would have won had we had an even half-decent referee instead of the coward ‘homer’ Probert, who fudged 3 penalty decisions, and all of them in Wigan’s favour.
Off topic but if Wenger would have played RVP, Theo and Clichy for the whole game and if they would have got an injury they would have blamed Wenger for putting them on the field.
@Walter
Of course they would! How many times have we already heard Wenger being blamed for our players’ injuries this season?
They complain if players are rested, and they complain if they’re not. They complain if players are rushed back too soon, and they complain if (like RVP and Djourou) they’re not rushed back quickly enough!
In the eyes of these individuals Wenger can no longer do anything right. They have lost all objectivity.
Yes, poor reffing and one would hope that it will be improved by the Powers That Be. However, I would be curious to see how other teams have been affected by by poor decisions in their games AND if we have been statistically MORE affected. I imagine it would require a WALTER for each team to do the referee analysis.
Great work, keep it up!
Hey Walter just watching the game back. I have to say i disagree quite a bit with your viewing of the game. I was looking to really get on his back. But in all honesty found it difficult too. Your first two supposed fouls i think are completely wrong.
The handball attempt you think rod should have been yellow carded for… really? There wasn’t a intent to handball, if anything you could quite clearly see he was over stretching. It was completely accidental with him quite clearly going for the header.
Secondly the Squallici ‘foul’ at first too me seemed like the French man had got himself into a bit of bother and if anything went down very easy. In my opinion it seemed like he got hustled off the ball not fouled. You could give it, but i think it would have been way soft.
It’s only until the bendtner free kick which he gives a subsequent corner for when it should have been a goal kick, to Wigan… that he got wrong. Other wise since then though we played absolutely appallingly
So Far up to this point i think Probert has been spot on, imo.
There were a few fouls on Denilson which were bad. I mean some real tugs and pulling down of players. Once it hit the 35 mark i would say there were a few fouls that should have been called. Mostly to us. But occasionally to them.
Agreeing with Wenger communication was a bit rubbish a few examples… First half
Denilson kicked it out from a corner Fab should have called and collected. Instead Den Kicks boots it. 3 in the midfield..Denilson, Squal and Rosic all leave the ball nearly give it away. Should have called for it… didn’t
I disagree about the Walcott pen claim… he did infact get the ball which bounced off walcott while the follow through tripped theo. Bur it really wasn’t a Pen.
The handball should have been a pen though. I really do think he messed up there. Totally in the view of it. I’ve heard the excuses from other fans of how he was protecting his face…. but apart from being a pathetic excuse… if your going to jump into the flight of the ball that’t not protecting your face… secondly whatever happened to heading the ball? Seeing as they do that on a daily basis.
Right So in all honesty i think you have been harsh on Probert. I think you owe him a re watch. There were fouls he missed, but he was obviously trying to keep the flow of the game and gave a lot of advantage play, in all honesty.
I thought Denilson was magnificent first half. Best player by far maestro of the midfield some fantastic direct forward passing. Especially when we were so bad for the first 20 mins. Really bad! But we got into it. His core strength needs work as he got pushed off a few times too easily. But no more than Squallaci who is a CB, so yea. I thought he made some great and very well placed tackles. I gotta edit a video for him. Because he had a better game than most.
And i don’t think we were as bad as most fans are raging on about. We found our feet, second half dropped off and basically for 35 mins played the ball in the midfield but created nothing up front.
Now about the subs… everyone is blaming Wenger for not bringing Nasri on earlier and or Theo. But Nasri was tame coming on. Looked really slow his marking was interesting. Not as much intent as Chelsea’s game.
Arshavin was….well Arshavin. Someone who fustrates and i think gives away an awful lot. Though does conjure up something, seriously should do better. Needs to work on his game.
The marking of Squal was all wrong, as an experienced CB he needs to be goal side. I don’t know what he thought might happen to the ball when he tried to header it facing our goal, but it wasn’t going back. I thought he had a bad game. Kos though shaky first half actually did a good job. The corner to the goal he did the right thing. Rodeagia was inbetween him and Fab. So couldn’t leave it. No doubt Fab would have had the ball tipped over him.
Anyway we should have won. We played well most of the game. And with 10 men we should have done better. We were caught sleeping and got hurt.
Walter! I back you all the way buddy. Being a ref i tend to believe you know what you are talking about. Aaron you project yourself as a Gooner, but i think you’re a faker – part of the AAA. Poobert was awful, Wigans 12th man. Hope we don’t get him again this season. Keep up the good work walter!!!
Mate Shut up… I’m the AAA? because i watched the game back and disagreed with Walter. With what i thought was fair points, which i urged Walter to re-watch.
Right that makes sense.