Dear Refs: WHY ARSENAL? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
By Abdulaziz Alfarhoud (Follow me on Twitter @azizalfarhoud )
“Including all the penalties that refs denied to the Arsenal”
Two months ago I wrote an article about referees. Now in this article I want to focus on Penalties that Arsenal should get and the ref denied it. I can talk about other teams & see how refs’ wrong calls helped them. Call given for activities such as diving for penalties & the giving of offside goals (see West Brom’s first goal in the final match for example). In fact I am sure if I would see all the other teams matches, I am sure they have more than 6 points from refs help.
Here are some analyses of how refs were corrupted and hindered Arsenal this season:
1) Players collision without the ball:
A lot of times on this EPL season, we saw some bad tackles on Arsenal players where refs didn’t whistle for foul. We even saw what amounted to a fight by players after which the FA didn’t even think about suspending the players!
There are many examples about bad tackling on Arsenal players such as Tiote of Newcastle on Song and Baloteli’s tackle also on Song, the fight between Barton and Gervinho and how the ref sent off the innocent Gervhino while letting the guilty Barton stay on the field. We also saw the FA give a 3 match suspension to Song after he stepped on Barton legs. Did we forget what Yaya Toure did to Mata & how the FA didn’t suspend him, allowing him to play against Arsenal the following week. Or Rooney’s elbow punch to a Wigan player last season.
We might also recall the ref at the Liverpool away match who didn’t give Liverpool players cards for their tackles, especially when Henderson deliberately hit Arteta so hard that he was rendered unconscious. And we can’t forget the tackles during the Stoke City & Norwich games that the ref didn’t even blow for.
2) Players dive against Arsenal for Penalties
A lot of players are trying to dive to get fouls or penalties, and in some Arsenal matches we saw how Suarez, Evra & Bale dived to get penalties. I don’t know how refs gave them. We should also not forget the imaginary penalty for Swansea against Arsenal when Dyer stepped on Ramsey’s leg & instead of giving a foul for Arsenal, the ref gave them a penalty!!
3) Offside goals & penalties to Arsenal
On many occasions refs denied Arsenal penalties. In fact I counted how many penalties Arsenal should have got: it was more than 20 penalties in the EPL this season & it surprised me that refs could give penalties to other teams and yet not some obvious ones to Arsenal. Surprisingly, NO penalty was given for Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium this season.
Let’s focus on some matches. Arsenal lost against Blackburn 4-3, their 3rd goal that changed the game was from an offside position. The ref denied a penalty after Scott Dann tackled Gervinho inside the box & gave Arsenal a foul instead.
In the Tottenham game, Van Der Vart had a yellow card, he used his hand in preparation to shoot the goal & he scored, after that he went to hug fans, the ref didn’t see the handball & it was surprising that he didn’t book him a 2nd yellow card for going to hug the fans – which is technically an offence. Their 2nd goal came by long shot by Walker & on the replay we can see how Adebayour who was in offside position closed the view to Sezezney which means an offside goal.
In the Manchester City away game, Van Persie scored an onside goal and the Phil Dowd denied it as he said it was offside. And there were two Penalties that the ref didn’t give to Arsenal. We should not forget what happened at the QPR away game when Mike Dean denied 2 real Penalties for Arsenal. Also in the Fulham game; instead of giving a yellow card for Zamora, the ref gave it to Djourou on the 81th minute of the game. That wrong card changed the result to 2-1 to Fulham. Or remember the Liverpool game at home, when they scored their 1st goal & it was offside, without forgetting how refs contributed to deny Arsenal many penalties in games such as at the Norwich & Stoke matches.
Here is a table with numbers of penalties that ref didn’t give to Arsenal this EPL season:
| Arsenal player they Tackeld or Handball | Result | Against | No |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ramsey | 2-0 “Lose” | Liverpool “H” | 1 |
| Gervinho “Givin Foul instead of PK” | 4-3 “Lose” | BlackBrun “A” | 2 |
| Walcott | 3 | ||
| Ramsey | 4-0 “Win” | Wigan “A” | 4 |
| Richard’s Handball | 1-0 “Lose” | Man City “A” | 5 |
| Ramsey | 6 | ||
| RVP | 1-0 “Win” | Man City “H” | 7 |
| Gervinho | 2-1 “Lose” | Fulham “A” | 8 |
| RVP | 9 | ||
| RVP | 2-1 “Win” | Aston Villa | 10 |
| RVP | 2-1 “Win” | Sunderland “A” | 11 |
| Ramsey | 3-0 “Win” | Wolves “A” | 12 |
| RVP | 13 | ||
| Handball | 1-1 “Draw” | Wolves “H” | 14 |
| Young’s Handball | 1-0 “Win” | QPR “H” | 15 |
| Barton’s Handball | 16 | ||
| Taiwo’s Handball | 2-1 “Lose” | QPR “A” | 17 |
| Taiwo’s Handball | 18 | ||
| Chamakh | 19 | ||
| RVP | 0-0 “Draw” | Chelsea “H” | 20 |
| Shawcros’s Handball | 1-1 “Draw” | Stoke “A” | 21 |
| Benayoun | 22 | ||
| Chamakh | 3-1 “Win” | Stoke “H” | 23 |
| Lappin’s Handball | 3-3 “Draw” | Norwich “H” | 24 |
| Koscielny | 25 | ||
| RVP | 26 | ||
| Rosicky | 1-0 “Win” | Everton | 27 |
4) Wrong calls came for Arsenal
The only wrong calls that gave Arsenal any benefit that I can recall was the Everton offside goal in the away match. But we should not forget the same ref “Lee Mason” was the ref last year for the same match and gave an offside goal at Emirates stadium for Luis Saha.
I am not here to find excuse about how Arsenal lost some titles but I’m surprised because ref wrong calls are increased season over seasons & Arsenal didn’t get some lucky calls from refs like other top teams. To show that there are a lot of problems with refs, there is the selection of Mike Dean for Arsenal, every time when Arsenal were on good winning record, they chose him and there are many examples of how he can turn a game: especially the QPR game.