The Untold referee index: Tiny Totts vs Arsenal. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Walter Broeckx
For the trip to the Lane we got ref Lee Probert in charge. The result was great but how was the ref? We just will find out.
PENALTY: Lansbury runs in the area and falls down. There was a hand of a defender on his back, but I think the ref is right for not giving a penalty. 1/1
GOAL: Nothing to report about this so a correct decision. 1/1
CARD: Livermore gets a yellow for a heavy tackle on Wilshere. Fully deserved. 1/1
CARD: Pavlyuchenko comes in late against Djourou and gets a yellow. Good decision from the ref. 1/1
OTHER: Wilshere sends Gibbs on his own to goal but Gibbs is flagged offside. The linesman got it wrong. 0/1
CARD: When Rosicky starts a break he is brought down by Naughton who gets a yellow card. A bit of a naughty boy there. Correct decision. 1/1
GOAL: Replay shows that Keane was offside when the ball was played to him. Another bad decision from the linesman. 0/1
CARD: Keane runs past Koscielny and falls down. Yellow card is given. Correct decision. 1/1
CARD: Lansbury gets in a heavy challenge and gets a fully deserved yellow card. 1/1
PENALTY/CARD: Bassong brings down Nasri who was past the last defender. Penalty given there was contact both at his foot and a bit of shirt holding as far as I could see on my stream. Correct decision for the penalty. But the ref does not give a card. The only card he can give is the red one. You are losing points here ref. 1/1 and 0/1
GOAL: correct decision. 1/1
PENALTY/CARD: This time Caulker is bringing Chamakh down who is again clear on goal. He pulls him on his arm. The ref points to the spot. In one the replays you can have a nice look at how the ref was looking at it and his angle. Correct penalty decision. But yet again the ref does not show a card. Okay consistent but consistently wrong one might say. Should have been another red card as he was the last defender and Chamakh was past him. 1/1 and 0/1. Again losing points.
GOAL: correct decision 1/1
GOAL: Quick thinking and nice executed from Arshavin. Correct decision. 1/1
So what does this make in total?
- GOAL: 4/5
- CARDS: 5/7
- PENALTIES: 3/3
- OTHER: 0/1
- TOTAL: 12/16 (75%)
My overall impression of the ref was that he had a very good game.
A small remark is the fact that the Tottenham players were doing some rotational fouling on Wilshere with some tackles that could have been a yellow card. But the ref kept an eye on it and punished the fouls and he gave a few verbal warnings to the players.
The only things he really missed was giving 2 red cards for the Tottenham defenders when they brought down the Arsenal players as they both were the last man. It is not the severity of the foul that counts but the fact that there was a clear goal scoring opportunity and that it was the last defender that committed the foul. Then it always should be a red card. He refused to even give a card on both occasions and that really was not good. In fact as a ref you only have two options: you don’t give anything (no penalty and no card) or you give them both. Those are the only options you have.
People always ask for consistency in the refereeing and this was the wrong consistency. Can you imagine that next week we get a red card for the same thing. Then you will look back and ask me why one is given and the other not? Just imagine that one of the players that should have got a red card would score a goal later in the game? So this really was not brave from the ref.
But in a way I also feel a bit for the ref. He has lost 2 points in my review on which he could not do anything. When you do a game with assistants you form a team. You work together and you trust each other. If the linesman puts up his flag for an offside you follow his decision unless you know and are 100% sure that he is wrong for a reason. For example a defender gives a back pass and the assistant could not see it, he flags but then as a ref you should overrule him. But these are rare occasions on a field. But in normal play you just have to trust on your assistant. The ref did and twice the assistant made a wrong decision. Gibbs and Keane. Twice the decision went against us and in fact it could have cost us the game as it made Tottenham alive. At the end of the day it didn’t matter as we won but it could have gone wrong. But there is not much the ref can do about it but he is missing 2 points for these decisions.
So he had 4 decisions that he had wrong. 2 because of his assistant and 2 for not giving the red cards he should have given. If you add them this would mean that he would have ended up with a score of 16/16 or a 100 % on the important decisions. If you take away the assistants mistakes you could say that he would have had a score of around 85-90%.
So he could have had an excellent game but he missed on a perfect score because of his assistant and his failure to produce the red cards. Still I think overall he had a very good game and kept things very well within the rules.
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100 years ago Arsenal were owned by Norris, and he was more interested in Fulham reserves than us.
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