Was it just inept or… no it can’t be…? Time wasting out of all control « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Walter Broeckx

Well this is a better day to be a Gooner.  A narrow but fully deserved 1-0 win over a team that came for only thing: destroy whatever football is if possible.  We have seen another exhibit of time wasting and bending the rules till it get ridiculous.

And all this with a ref who was very very very very very very inept. Maybe it is just karma that the goal for Arsenal looked one that was against the rules. Because I think that Arteta might have been offside when he first headed against the crossbar.  Because for the one split second Arsenal bend the rules (not that being offside is really bending the rules) QPR lost the game. But I am waiting for the referee reviewer on this because maybe there is an angle where you can see the full goal line and maybe there was another defender somewhere along the line (the one that attempted to stop Arshavin maybe?)

But the amount of time wasting we have seen was again unseen before. And our friend the ref? He stood there and …did nothing.  Now of course it could be that he didn’t noticed the time wasting. But then I can only ask myself: how on earth did he get there?  That is something that as a ref you should be aware that it can happen and then you have to act and stop it.  I have seen a few refs doing this very well this season (Clattenburg just to name one) so one can assume that a ref in the PL must have heard of the notion of time wasting before. This ref on the day seemed to have never heard of it and didn’t do anything about it.

Another thing he didn’t seem to know was that when a free kick has to be taken the wall has to be 9.15 meters away or 10 yards. And this has to be the distance WHEN THE BALL IS KICKED! Because on almost every occasion the ref put the wall at about the correct distance. But then he allowed the wall to come forward again and so on a few occasions the wall was at some 6 meters distance away from the ball. And thus making it impossible to produce a decent free kick.

Surely a ref in the PL has to be aware of the phenomena of a wall encroaching by taking little steps over the ground without lifting their feet. An invisible moonwalk one could say. How on earth can a ref not notice this? How on earth can he not notice that the wall is no longer in the position he put it in the first place???? How on earth can a PL ref let this go so many times? Okay it can happen once. But twice means you are not paying attention. But almost all the time…it means that you are not suited as a ref in the PL.

And then we have not just the time wasting from QPR but the time wasting by …the ref himself. I think he was the only person in the ground to not notice the fact that one team (QPR) was doing all it could to stop the game flow. And I think he was the only person in the ground to not notice the fact that one team (Arsenal) was doing all it can to keep the game at a high tempo.  Of course he noticed this. And if not: just another example of hem not being fit to be a ref in the PL.

On almost any occasion when Arsenal had a free kick close to the QPR penalty area he used over one minute of game time. First he had to discuss with almost every player on the field what was going on, what they would have for dinner later this evening, the colour of the grass (which was rather green), it took ages before he even started to put the wall in the correct place.

And then he had to chat with the players in the wall about some facts that we cannot know. But I surely hope he didn’t tell them that they could not move forward to the ball. It looked like that but surely… then he should have punished it. But he didn’t. So what was he wasting Arsenals, yours and my time?  It just took ages to get everyone ready and by the time the Arsenal players could consider taking the free kick the wall was standing just a few yards away again. Time and time again.

Missing it once can be excused. Missing it twice raises questions. Missing it all the time shows that either you are completely unfit to be a ref in the PL or….

So he was inept when it came to time wasting from QPR. He was inept when it came to putting the wall at the right distance. He was inept by wasting time when Arsenal wanted to take a free kick. I leave the rest of his performance to the ref reviewer but this was something that made my ref blood boil.

And then to add to the insult of being a poor….or was it a biased ref, he did something extraordinary at the end of the 90 minutes. Now I know that when a team has wasted a lot of time and has bent the rules that if they lose when the time is up I will not allow them extra time. If QPR wanted to equalize of win the game, they should have hurried up a bit in the 90 minutes. And now with all the time wasting they got rewarded with 5 minutes of extra time to rescue a point.

And it was QPR that had wasted all the time! And yet the ref gave them 2 extra minutes outside of the more or less mandatory for the substitutes.  I think that made it clear that he was a man with not that noble intentions.

All his failures and all those failures going against Arsenal gave me the impression that he was once again trying to do his best to step in the footsteps of Dean in the previous seasons. Mr. Taylor you  really had a bad performance and all those things going against Arsenal didn’t look good.

But at the end of the day we spoiled your party. And if you really didn’t do it on purpose it is time to look at your performance on TV again. And see how you did all to take the speed out of the game, let the wall move closer without stopping it and not punishing the time wasting. Time to take your courses in your hands, time to try to the feeling of the game. Because on the things I mentioned you were more than poor.

Only you know it was just being inept or being biased.  If the first : do something about it and let the PGMOL do something about it. If the latter: shame on you. And you are starting to get a bit of history on those things I’m afraid to say.

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