So what if…. Where would Arsenal be if technology had been used to correct ref errors this season? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
By Walter Broeckx
So what if…. How much of progress did humanity make just by someone, somewhere thinking these 3 words? Many good invention started just by these 3 magical words. So I was thinking: So what if Fifa/Uefa/FA started with a way to cancel out bad mistakes from the refs.
So what if those organisations would do what many other sports organisation did in the last years and use all the help they have available to help their refs. American Football uses it, Tennis uses it, Ice hockey uses it (as far as I know or has some kind of goal line technology), Cricket uses it, Rugby uses it. And isn’t Rugby very much like football? Apart from the fact that in rugby you can use your hands an in football not. But it is a fluid game just like football is.
So what if there would be a video ref who analyses on the spot the important decisions in a game? Would it make any difference to Arsenal? So let us try out and see at what should have happened if the refs would make no mistakes or if they would be helped by the video ref. Now I could go through all the games but I decided that I would only take on the decisions that had an impact on the final outcome of the game.
I know the first Liverpool goal should have been disallowed. But because Liverpool scored another goal later in that game I left it out this review. We lost 0-2 and the only difference would be we lost 0-1. Just as I will leave the first goal from Robin Van Persie out that he scored against Bolton. We won 3-0 so the only difference would have been we won 2-0. And this is the only major decision that went our way so far this season. I also left out penalties not given against QPR as we won that game and it would only matter for the goal difference and maybe, just maybe for Robin Van Persie to have another record on his account.
Let us start with the first game of the season. Newcastle.
A foul on Gervinho is not given as a penalty by the ref. Okay fine but then Barton grabs Gervinho by the throat while the ball is in play and in the Newcastle penalty area. There is only one decision to be made at that time: penalty for Arsenal. That would have been the difference between one point and 3 points. 2 points lost because of the ref.
Next game at Blackburn.
Yakubu scores the third goal for Blackburn from an offside position. Goal should have been cancelled.
And in the final minute of the game Robinson bundles over Walcott and this should have been a penalty for Arsenal. We got no points from this game but with cancelling the Yakubu goal and the penalty the score line should have been 3-4 in favour of Arsenal. So we lost 3 points because of bad decisions on the day. A total of 5 points lost so far.
Next game at Tottenham.
Van Der Vaart controls the ball with his arm and scores from this. The goal should have been cancelled. We should have gotten one point from this game. The total so far is 6 points lost.
Let us go to Manchester City.
Robin Van Persie scores the equaliser but this is wrongly ruled out for offside. On MOTD2 they showed the line of the last defender and the defender on the top was level with Van Persie when the ball was played to him.
And then later Dowd turned his famous blind eye for a handball from Richards. A Koscielny cross flies some 20 meters in the air and Richards stops the ball with his arm and brings it under control. Dowd is looking at it from a few meters distance but well we know Dowd. So a not given correct goal and a not given penalty. In stead of losing 1-0 we should have won that game 1-2. 3 points lost because of bad decisions. Counting so far : 9 points missed.
The last incident that had an impact on the final score was at Fulham.
Senderos catches the standing feet of Gervinho. Ref Probert ignores it like he ignored most fouls on Arsenal players in that game during the 90 minutes. We lost 2-1 but the final score should have been 2-2. Again one point lost. This makes a total of 10 points lost so far because of what we will call mistakes from the refs.
10 points more that would give us 46 points so far this season. And because of MC having 3 points less it would mean that we would be top of the league right now.
So is the only difference between being top and being where we are now a world class striker/midfielder/defender/keeper? No, the most important difference is if we would have had world class referees during the season then we would be top of the league.
Maybe with the current transfer window open we shouldn’t be focussing on buying world class players. No just buy us a few world class referees for the PGMOL and things could look rather different. Maybe the PGMOL could do some transfers themselves? As there seems to be no age limit they could transfer in the best Fifa refs who have retired because of reaching the age of 45 years old? Now that would be some upsetting incoming transfers in the EPL.
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