Ref disaster, ESPN laughable, Arsenal magnificent « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month

By Tony Attwood

I normally hold back for Walter to make his comments on matches – and he may well by typing away as I type this, but I am going to stick my neck out and say that I thought the ref made one atrocious decision today.

Vaz Tê signed for West Ham in the Championship in January this year, and maybe he is not used to the laws of the game in England, but leaving your foot in so that it contacts with a goalkeepers’ head is not normally part of our game.  In my view that should have been an immediate sending off.

Maybe the ref saw this differently, maybe Walter will tell me that I am wrong on this, but it looked like the player left his foot in so that it would take Mannone’s head, and that is a sending off offence.  Perhaps the ref thought that the player’s attempt to get the ball was a mistake, maybe he was influenced by the large number of medics on the pitch, but all things considered I still think that Vaz Te should have gone off, and WHU played with ten men thereafter.

As for ESPN, the Mickey Mouse channel of football, they came up with this wonderful statement about Theo.  “Among Arsenal’s English contingent only Ian Wright has scored more.”  I rather think Cliff Bastin scored more than Theo in one season, and actually scored 150 goals for Arsenal.  And as for his Englishness, he was born in Devon.

There are of course a lot of Englishmen who have scored more goals for Arsenal, but hey, this is ESPN.

ESPN had one commentary woman talking about Arsenal being fourth in the league, and the team of experts talking about being 5th.  But well, who cares after a performance like that.

A wonderful goal by Theo, a wonderful goal by Cazorla, and the first for Giroud in the league – which makes two in a week I think.

A great return to life after the sadness of last weekend.  Thank you Arsenal, I enjoyed that.  And at least this is the last season of ESPN.