Untold Ref Review: Arsenal 1 – Wolves 1 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Ref Reviewer 04

Ref Attwell came over to do the game between Arsenal and Wolves. What was his score in this game?

Well a game with lots of incidents to talk about. Let us start with the first half. And this was a rather good half for the ref. A few “mistakes” like giving a foul against Van Persie when the defender that headed the ball away bumps in to Van Persie. What on earth was the ref thinking when giving a foul for that.

In the second half you could see, well at home with two refs we came to the same conclusion sitting in a different rooms, that the ref started to lose control.

First the penalty shout for Arsenal. The defender had one arm stretched away from his body but on the one replay they showed it wasn’t clear if the ball hit that arm or the one in front of his body. So I have to go with the ref on this one. Booking Vermaelen was correct by the way.

The ref then placing himself in front of a possible player going to take a free kick would have been a nice joke if it wasn’t such a bloody serious game. This is pub league stuff, with all respect for the pub league. A total lack of awareness.

The Song-Henry incident was also down to the ref not reaction quick enough to the situation. With tempers rising on the field you should keep it strict and punish the smallest foul at once. Not punishing Henry when he came in with a high foot and studs showing was completely wrong. You could see Song getting up with his brain switched off thinking: if they can kick, so can I. This is how you lose control of a game as a ref by not punishing the fouls that happen. It gave me a headache on how I should count the points for this but as the first wrong call that started the events in the next second was wrong I couldn’t give the ref any points for this.

Let us move on to the time wasting. Twice Wolves took a minute to make a substitution. But the instructions are clear on this. Unless a player is standing ready at the halfway line you don’t stop the game and you don’t wait to restart the game. You just get on with the game. Wolves did this twice in this game. The first time you could say okay a misunderstanding, but a second time… this is again pub league stuff.

And the worst part is that there are some instructions to handle with this. Because the captain is responsible for substitutions in his team he should be booked if they do it like that and are clearly using this as a time wasting tactic. And certainly when it happens twice the ref should have taken action. The captain of Wolves was Johnson who then should have received his second yellow card.

The Milijas red card. In the first half Milijas escaped a yellow card for a high foot studs showing against Benayoun. The ref then warned him (should have give a yellow at the time) and I think this entered the ref’s mind when he gave the red card.

It was a frontal tackle so always a foul and a yellow card but as he was sliding over the ground with his foot not above the ball a yellow card would have been enough. But I think the ref, who by then had lost it completely, wanted to clean up the game a bit. If he would have booked Milijas in the first half as he should have done it would have been a second yellow and he would have been off anyway. So the final outcome was correct but not the right way things happened.