Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » Stoke and Arsenal: the referee’s views

By Walter Broeckx

Some have asked my point of view on the game and I must say it is with much pain in my heart that I will try to analyse the game.

I will try to come to the Ramsey  incident in the last part and hopefully by then I get my thoughts a bit straightened out.

Should Ramsey have been given a penalty?  Yes it was a penalty. As I wrote in my live match comment on the Arsenal Benelux site it was a penalty. The defender got nowhere the ball and brought him down.

The yellow card on Song? This was laughable at the time. They ran next to each other Song had his arm out a bit but it was Delap who was holding Song’s hand. I think he was trying to dry his hands on Song’s sleeves to take a throw. This is the way I saw it when I could laugh about it. It was before the Ramsey incident.

Let’s go further to the foul on Bendtner. It was again a penalty. The Stoke defender just pushed him with his arm in his side so he couldn’t control the ball. Lucky we scored after that our third goal.

The penalty we finally got was a penalty. If a defender stands like that with his arms out stretched and you stop the ball it is always a penalty if the defender stands in the penalty area.

And now the Ramsey incident. It all started long before in fact. The ref did gave some fouls against Stoke players but didn’t get his cards out to tell them: stop this wild tackling. Even a blind man could see that the Stoke players couldn’t do anything about the way Arsenal was passing the ball around and the only thing they did was throw themselves at everything with an Arsenal shirt on.

But to be fair to the Stoke players they only did what the pundits and the press and other media are suggesting time after time.  It has been coming for a while and today it happened.

For years most of the pundits, the press, the media have been applauding teams that try to kick Arsenal off the field. Every defeat we suffered the last years against teams like Stoke, Birmingham and other Blackburn and Bolton’s was a defeat coming from “let’s kick them off the field”.

The pundits on MOTD never mention it or even worse they praise it and say look at it and this is the way to kick Arsenal off the field and to beat them. And we have had our casualties during the past seasons. Diaby lost a season when he was just starting his Arsenal career.

We all remember Eduardo being kicked to pieces in Birmingham. And did the pundits and the media learned their lesson? NO. They just went further applauding the “kick them off the field” tactics we have seen so many times.

And now Ramsey. The next victim from the kick them off the field boys. As I have been the victim of a similar situation which has ended my career in football I must say that I really feel sick when such a thing happens on the field and it is always hard for me to watch it again. On days like this I can feel the pain Aaron has to go through again in my leg.

Even now I feel a gnawing pain in my leg where it was broken. And it brings tears to my eyes. I was 20 when it happened so I know what it’s like. Sorry to get my personal feelings getting the upper hand on this for a moment but it really is hard for me.

So I come to the tackle. This is the thing that you get when you have a team of football players and a team of kickers. In my opinion it was a late tackle and reckless tackle. I don’t think he intend to break his leg but he was late as he was trying to kick as hard as he could, ball or leg, he only tried to kick as hard as he could. Unfortunately Ramsey was faster than Shawcross and therefore the Stoke player hit him full on the leg.  It was violent, it was way too hard. It was a straight red card. A violent attack on a player is always a red card and this was one.

I rather would not blame Shawcross for this alone. NO, it is the WHOLE PRESS, THE WHOLE MEDIA and THE WHOLE PUNDITS  and THE REFS that should stand up for once and for all and stop this kick them off the field thing.

THE REFS SHOULD PROTECT THE SKILLFUL PLAYERS MORE IN STEAD OF LETTING THERE LEGS BEING KICKED TO PIECES.

Earlier in the season I wrote even somewhere on the internet, could be on the Untold site but I don’t know for the moment,  that I was waiting in fear for such a thing to happen to us once again. Unfortunately it did again today.

It happened because the media, the refs and the FA knew it could and would happen and they all did nothing. They are all guilty as hell. Don’t they dare to say :  “Wir haben es nicht gewusst”.

Which literally translated into English is: “ We did not know it”. You did know it would happen again and you did nothing to prevent it. Enough is enough. This has got to stop.

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Elsewhere

It seems inappropriate to run the usual rumours section at such a time as this, and indeed if I were trying to make up a rumour I could never have come up with anything like the fact that Shawcross walked off the pitch and was immediately given a call-up to the England squad.  Or the fact that in today’s Sunday Mirror Ashley Cole says he may quit football after the collapse of his marriage.

Tony Attwood immediately after the end of the Stoke game

Almunia: are we being unfair. By ex-keeper now referee, Walter Broeckx

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