Thursday, December 30th, 2010 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does
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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