The Untold ref review: Arsenal – Newcastle « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

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By Walter Broeckx, the ref

When I heard the news that Mike Dean would be our ref I got a bad feeling. But on the other hand this was a chance for me to see how he would do when I don’t have to see the game on TV and I could be my own director and could follow him the 90 minutes whenever I wanted. And thank goodness I was there as I really have seen something special, as a ref.

As from former articles like this one, you will know I have a special bond with Mr. Bean, sorry Mr. Dean.

15 minutes played the keeper takes 30 seconds for a goal kick.

CARD:  Clichy gets a booking and nothing to argue about that. 1/1

28 minutes played Newcastle take 47 seconds to take a free kick. And no there was no treatment required.

A minute later another 45 seconds is lost with a free kick.

CARD : Tiote gets a booking. It was a foul but not that he was pulling his shirt out for some meters, just a short pull and a foul,  so this wasn’t a booking in my eyes. 0/1

40 minutes played the keeper takes 37 seconds for a goal kick.

OTHER: Dean is seeing a foul from an invisible Arsenal player in the 42^nd minute. He makes all kind of gestures to cover up his mistake. Even the Newcastle player thinks it’s a great joke. And they are laughing aloud. If it would be with two pub teams it would be rather funny.  0/1

GOAL: Carroll scores and this wasn’t Deans foul. 1/1

Krul claims an easy cross and keeps the ball some 12 seconds in his hands.

CARD: Yellow card for Fabregas. He lost control as he had a few times and brought the Newcastle player down. You could have seen this coming. 1/1

Krul is taking all the time in the world to take goal kicks. The Arsenal players appeal to the ref to do something. The ref looks at his watch. And he does another thing which I will come back to in a moment.

CARD: A Newcastle player gets a late booking for a tackle on Cesc. The ref allowed advantage but gave him the card a bit later when he handed his last card. 1/1

CARD Red for Koscielny. He was the last man and Squillaci was not behind him when he brought the Newcastle player down. So a correct decision. 1/1

So this was his last decision of the game and I could stop it here if it wouldn’t have been that I was in the Emirates yesterday. And the score would have been:

CARDS: 5/6

PENALTY: no

GOAL:  1/1

OTHER: 0/1

Total score:6/8 (75%)

But I really cannot stop here as I have seen something that really, really made my jaw drop on to my feet.

But before I tell you what I must go back a few years and to my own career or better said the start of it. When I did my course the teachers drew our attention to how to make gestures, about our body language and so forth, and they also told us a few poses you never must do on a field as a ref. Like “the farmer on his land-pose” where a ref is standing with his both hands in his pockets. Or like the “phew I too tired to run anymore-pose” where you stand with your hands in your hips bent over like a marathon runner after a marathon.

And finally the ‘I don’t know what I can do about it-pose’ which is being done by showing the palms of your hands forward a bit to the side of your hips and being completed with a pull up from the shoulders and looking rather dumb. I think I have seen Mr. Bean, sorry once again, Mr. Dean do this on a few times. Every time Newcastle was wasting time and the Arsenal players asked Mr. Bean (oh why not) to do something about it, he replied with the I don’t know what I can do about it pose.

If you act like that on an amateur field in Belgium and you have someone who is coming to check you, you can forget about any promotion for the next months if not forever. Not only the pose in itself is so depressingly wrong but most of all: You can do something about it as a ref.

And if you are reading this Mr. Bean this is what you can do about it:

1. Blow your whistle from a distance and make the gesture to get it on. You know like the policeman who is telling you on a crossroad to speed it up a bit.
2. After that you tell him when you are in his neighbourhood you will book him if the keeps on doing it (at a corner or so –Arsenal had 7 corners in the first half so time enough to do it you know)
3. Actually book him if he keeps doing it. (Now what do you think of that for a change)
4. Actually book other players who are time wasting (maybe this is to much for you but keep trying)
5. Add more than just 0 minute for time wasting (3 minutes for the changes + 1 minute for the injury of the keeper was given) and that after I have seen you looking at your watch more times than a hurried person when he is waiting for his bus. Or did you want to show off with your new watch?

This is how you suppose to act and as I have followed the course twice (when I started and when my 2 sons started their career as I thought it would be a wise thing to do the whole course again as could only learn from it) on both occasions they told me this about the poses and the way to punish time wasting.

So when I see a ref live in the EPL taking those ‘forbidden’ poses as a ref I really cannot let this go without some kind of punishment in his points. This is such a disgraceful behaving that I as a ref was so shocked about it I even told Tony about it before we said hello after the game when we met. And to think that if I been at home watching on TV I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.   Because they show all kind of replays and I cannot see the ref during those replays.

So for the fact of posing his so called helplessness and for the fact that he was making everyone believe that he was taking care of the time wasting by looking at his watch but in reality just was laughing at our players I must act and give hem a 0/2 in the category others. And then we get a final result of:

CARDS: 5/6

PENALTY: no

GOAL:  1/1

OTHER: 0/3

Total score:6/10 (60%)

And this because I was in the stadium and I was watching you Mr. Bean.

And what first started as a mistyping thing where I unconscious wrote a B instead of a D when typing his name, I do start to wonder if Rowan Atkinson had someone in mind when he invented his Mr. Bean?

The Untold Index. Life.  The Universe.  Mr Bean

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History?  Yup!  History.