Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » Those ref decisions balance out by the end of the season, don’t they?

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One thing that is very often said by fans from other teams or by our own fans is: if you take the decisions over the whole season the good and the bad one will even themselves out. Now do they really? It is just one of those general truths that goes around in the football world and it is mostly used to keep you quiet and make you shut up.

I wouldn’t be Walter if I thought it would be time to do some research on this. So I tried to do a complete review of the season so far. Of course you cannot take every decision in midfield and put it on a scale. No I just tried to take the most important decisions, those involved in red cards, goals, penalty’s and disallowed goals.

I must admit that I have not done this for MU and Chelsea as I did not see all their games. If someone has numbers about their decisions it would be nice to know them also.

It could be that I have missed on something so feel free to add the things I forgot. I only took the games that I think had anything to report. I report if it is a decision in our favour or against us and I give a very short description of the facts.

Arsenal – Portsmouth : 1 decision against us which cost us a goal : charge on our keeper.

MU-Arsenal: 2 decisions against us : 2 penaltyies not given (Arshavin + RVP)

ManC – Arsenal: 2 decisions against us : Tackle from Adebayor on Cesc (was yellow minimum – could have been red), stamp on the head of RVP by Adebayer should have been red) Ade was involved in the goals that followed.

Arsenal – Blackburn: 1 decision in our favour : penalty not given for Blackburn, 1 decision against : free kick from which they scored was not a foul.

Arsenal – Birmingham: 1 decision against us : foul on keeper when Birmingham scored.

West Ham – Arsenal: 2 decisions against us : free kick from which they scored was foul against our player and it was no penalty, it was a dive.

Wolves – Arsenal: 1 decision against us : penalty not given.

Sunderland – Arsenal: 1 decision against us : penalty not given (even the MOTD pundits said it was a penalty)

Liverpool – Arsenal: 1 decision against us: goal was offside from Liverpool, 1 decision in our favour: Liverpool should have had a penalty for a foul on Gerrard by Gallas.

Burnley – Arsenal: 1 decision against us : Penalty not given for a foul on Cesc. (Dean was the ref)

Arsenal – Hull: 1 decision in our favour: Nasri should have had a red card, 2 decisions against us: Barnby and Hunt also should have been sent away in the same incident.

Bolton – Arsenal: 3 decisions against us: 2 clear penalty’s not given against Cesc, 1 red card not given for the knee on the head of Cesc and the pulling of his hair in that same moment.

Arsenal – Bolton: 1 decision in our favour: Ref could have given a foul against Gallas when we scored our second goal.

Hull – Arsenal: 1 decision against us: the penalty for Hull should not have been given as it was clear offside from the striker.

Birmingham – Arsenal: 2 decisions against us : Penalty against Walcott not given and red card not given when Arshavin was going to lob the keeper.

Tottenham – Arsenal: I’m not going to give a decision against us but the ref could have given a red card for the foul on Rosicky as he was going on goal in the first half.

• If you add the numbers this means we have had 4 major decisions going our way.
• On the other hand we had 20 major decisions against us.

Like I said before : it could be that I missed something and if I did please add a decision so we can change the final result.

But for the moment we cannot say that the good and the bad decisions have evened themselves out for us. Maybe we could ask the refs to give us some 16 major decisions in our last games?

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