Arsenal ‘fighting against more than 11 men’ v Man City as referee conspiracies abound

Arsenal fans are raging about everything because they think the world is on Man City’s side but especially Michael Oliver.

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Quick half-time thoughts

I always wonder how amazing Trossard could be if he had a full night’s sleep. Lad has not slept in years.

Arsenal equaliser was incredible. Second is a calculated foul on keeper which will shaft other teams.

Hope second half is as eventful!

Anthony, Dublin

…The sight of Arteta jumping up to celebrate Arsenal’s first goal was most disturbing. His pants had no belt or belt loops. I believe the waist was elastic like maternity pants. Does explain how they hug his ass the way they do. Ok back to football.

Jason G, Montreal, Canada

…Trossard, mate, what are you doing?

2 – 1 up at your title rivals, starting to get a grip in the game, and a chance to send a message that you can pip City to the title.

Stupid sending off and no complaints. Still shocks me that footballers give referees a chance to make a decision in daft situations like that.

Let’s see what the second half holds (preparing for a combination of Arteta and Arsenal fans moaning about a straightforward decision)!

Tom

MORE ON MAN CITY v ARSENAL FROM F365:

👉 16 Conclusions on Man City 2-2 Arsenal: A quite ridiculous end to a quite ridiculous game

👉 Manchester City and Arsenal share pyrrhic draw with Pep Guardiola left to count greater cost

👉 Tetchy Mikel Arteta gives ‘unbelievable’ reaction to Arsenal draw and red card against Man City

Quick full-time thoughts

Well Arsenal and Arteta deserve congratulations. Ref was against you. We’re a man down for a full half, against the best team in the league who rained shots start to finish.

That was a seriously gutsy display of defending.

Lee

And here’s the full referee conspiracy stuff

Second Trossard yellow given 8 minutes into 6 minutes of ET

Second Goal given 8 minutes into 7 minutes of 2nd half ET (also, where did that come from?)

We know he has ties to Saudi. We know he didn’t send Kovacic off because he didn’t want to ‘spoil the game’ .

So why is he refereeing this game?

I know the managers and players can’t talk about it but I can. He’s corrupt, Man City are cheats and I’ll be glad when they are playing in the Vanarama league with their torture money. F**k them.

Good game though!

Stu AFC (if this comes across as bitter, it’s supposed to be.)

…This is getting f**king ridiculous.

Eagle

…So here we go with a rinse repeat of the next 3 days of mailbox from 3 weeks ago. I feel no different now as I did then. I expect the gaslight brigade to come out and say the ref had no choice (except when he did). Michael Oliver couldn’t be consistent in the same game, sounds familiar. Maybe Oliver just likes to be extra fussy when there’s a chance of a red card….try again because when Szobazslai, whilst on a yellow, kicked the ball away in the Liverpool v Forest game Oliver decided he did have a choice and chose not to negatively effect the game….which is a very apt choice of words because this is exactly what Howard Webb said Michael Oliver was weighing up when he chose not to send Kovacic off for 2 awful tackles at the Emirates last year.

With every game I can feel even more what Liverpool fans felt for 3 years or so. You can be virtually perfect and Man City will be just a bit better, and it also feels like you’re fighting against more than just 11 men on the pitch.

I find it such a strange hill for refs to die on, to talk about ‘no choice’ suggests there is a black and white nature to these decisions – so to go so heavy with second yellows is of course going to bring huge scrutiny on every single occasion this is not punished including inevitably in the same game. Applied consistently will as Arteta said have over 100 games this season with red cards.

There is a certain irony that the ref was so desperate to not allow any wasting of time and so flourished his red card to defend a game in to a second half of Arsenal doing everything they could to waste time and slow the game down.

Anyway, to the actual football, That’s 4 games in a row undefeated against City but Arsenal will feel gutted with a point against a team who hasn’t lost at home in nearly 60 games. I thought Arsenal had City totally rattled, and there was delicious irony in City moaning about supposed ‘dark arts, dirty tactics etc’ a classic case of a bully receiving a fair hit on the nose and realising they’re not infallible. The Gabriel goal and the chance he missed before was seismic, this was Arsenal in full physical bully mode on the best team of the last 6 years. Arsenal had a plan, City knew the plan and were powerless to stop the massive physicality and determination of Arsenal and Gabriel.

It’s a shame Calafiori’s wonder goal won’t take many headlines.

Pep whinging bout Arsenal’s first goal, Walker was jogging back telling (again ironically) his team mates to concentrate, bringing his Euro lapses to the league.

With 10 men Arsenal were superb, restricting City to hopeful long pot shots. How City didn’t change it to get their creative players on the edge of the box instead of Dias and Akanji was a big miss from Pep.

Rival fans will line up to try to bring Arsenal down, most want City to win the league for 2 reasons. 1, it masks the failures of your own team and 2. Arsenal fans are simply louder and in greater number than City ones so you won’t like the crowing. If partisan fan nonsense can be put to one side ask yourself if this is how you want games consistently refereed this season, all the while failing to clamp down on acts of serious foul play and violent conduct. Martinez 2 footed jump tackle anyone?

For Arsenal to go 3 back to back away games v Spurs, Atalanta, City (with 36 hours less rest) with key injuries and come away unbeaten is tremendous. Add in the win away to Villa and Arsenal have had a seriously tough start to the season and have shown their big balls. With these refs and chasing City it’s going to be a long season but Arsenal have shown they’re ready to fight again.

Phenomenal effort to enforce that bond between fans and team even more. Very proud.

Rich, AFC (can’t wait for the 115 answers)

…I don’t like criticism of officials. It’s pointless as it can’t change the outcome, it undermines the genuinely good officials and ultimately is usually the last desperate act of the losers.

However, sometimes it’s warranted and the brain fart of inconsistency of the magnitude displayed at the Etihad is much worse than basic poor standards or lack of knowledge of the rules. Trossard sending off was fine if Doku had gone too. Corrupt or incompetent?

It is infuriating and at the highest level of the game, unacceptable.

Eoin (reffed a game at the weekend and got punched by a parent for not awarding a free so can honestly relate to the referee’s position too) Ireland

Send Haaland off

I’m sure you’ll get lots of contributions about the Doku/Trossard inconsistencies (FWIW I felt both warranted a yellow card). I’d like to focus on the aftermath of the City equaliser and (yet another) inexplicable VAR failure.

In case you missed it (Sky decided only to show it right at the end of their coverage), Man City score the inevitable equaliser and Haaland runs into the net to retrieve the ball (for a quick restart and chasing the winner you would assume).

But no, instead he runs up behind Gabriel and deliberately hurls the ball into the back of his head. I’ll give Oliver the benefit of the doubt and assume that he missed this…but VAR?? Surely they saw this and would quickly decide that this is violent conduct and encourage their man in black to view the pitchside monitor? Nope….not a sausage.

I have no issue with Arsenal players being sent off for stupidly ignoring the rules on kicking the ball away (and the inconsistent application to opposition players in both games doesn’t change the fact that they deserved their cautions)…but this is violent conduct all day long (as a referee myself). It was deliberately striking an opponent and should have resulted in a dismissal. Wouldn’t have changed this match…but Haaland should be serving a suspension. If VAR saw this and decided not to intervene…laughable. If VAR missed it, can Haaland be retrospectively charged by the FA?

Pete, Norfolk

That was very nearly epic

That was emotional. That was also very nearly one of the greatest defensive performances of the Premier League era. That felt like a Champions League final.

Raya didn’t deserve to have it end like that. I agree that Trossard was stupid, I personally think a second yellow was f***ing ludicrous but then again, of course I do, I’m an Arsenal fan.

Had we won that, I would have put it ahead of beating Messi’s Barcelona back in 2011 2-1. As it is, we nearly scalped the champions in their own backyard, and it took the entire weight of pep ball plus Mike Oliver to scrape a draw in the 98th minute.

This now all feels very much like last year again, because no one is stopping this City team. Silverware needs to show up this year, because this team can put on a show.

Adam (although I really would appreciate someone slapping that smug blond ponytail off him) Gooner in France

Arsenal sh*thousing was brilliant

I will leave detailed analysis to fans of either club, but may I say how delighted I am to watch a team shithouse City properly, and to watch the City players completely lose their cool about it. They are frequent and expert purveyors of the dark arts, and it makes their hilarious whinging even sweeter.

On the red card – if it’s for kicking the ball away, that’s absurd. I assumed at the time it was for Trossard smashing his shoulder into the back of the City player before the ball arrived. Which is absolutely the kind of thing that can get you a second yellow in a tetchy match that everyone playing wanted to boil over.

Dan, Plastic LFC

112 minutes and misaligned focus

Just watched City v Arsenal and a couple of things came to mind. Sadly, these observations come right back to the Premier League meddling in ways that are unhelpful.

The first is why on earth are games this long. 112 minutes of football. What on earth is going on there? The sending off was at 45 +8 and the equaliser wasn’t even the last act of the game, and that also came 8 minutes into injury time. This is a madness. How are players supposed to deal with a 25% increase in match time? This must be well into a red zone for further injuries. This isn’t helping the game or the league but instead dragging things out needlessly.

The second is the insistence on policing non-problems. After Rice’s sending off it was stated players have been told interacting with the ball after the whistle has gone will result in a booking’. Well, it doesn’t though and moreover this was a non-problem in the first place. I would understand if games were being ground down due to endless restart delays but it hasn’t been at all. It’s more complications for referees, which is an issue, but moreover driving focus towards how they will react. Refs now have no choice to send players off if they do this while on a booking, whereas they have more leeway when adjudging dangerous tackles.

Quite a lot of issues can be dealt with by the Ref telling the captain to make something stop of there will be bookings. Police through adult communication and to dogma. Maybe then players will be more respectful.

This all smacks to me like needless fidgeting to prove authority. Next season we won’t see anyone booked for these infractions because attention will have moved on to policing shoe lace length or hairstyles. To be fair, Haaland’s hair needs policing. He looks like an extra in a Bon Jovi biopic, so let’s hope. Whatever the arse-bug next season is it will constitute the new comedy-booking.

This attempt to make the game all about the refs isn’t a thing. And if this continues, we will need a real-time audio link akin to Rugby where referees and VAR are far more transparently accountable.

And as games drift into 125 and 130 territory, I am sure there will be a convenient ad break at the 90 with injury time operating like extra time. Either way, let’s arrest the drift into farce.

Maybe, if we are lucky, we can get a dramatic Apple TV series. Refs. Starring Piers Brosnan and Mr Tumble. This way we can really get to grips with why the constant tinkering has become habit.

More football. Less rule-causing drama.

Alex