Just Arsenal News

There is little doubt that Arsenal should have won the game against Everton at the Emirates last night, but it seems to me that a lot of fans are taking it too hard. Yes, it was a great chance for the Gunners to fire themselves into a commanding position in the Premier League, but we are still in with a very good chance.

Everton were allowed to be extremely physical by the referee Neil Swarbrick, but Arsenal stood up to it well. It was the sort of game we used to lose a few years ago, so I am not overly disappointed with a point. If Everton had nicked a win, the situation would be much worse, but we have got a tough game out of the way and can focus on the next five matches with optimism. .......Read the full article here

Arsene Wenger believes that Arsenal should have taken their chances and also won all three points in last night’s match against Everton, and he thinks that David Moyes’ men were overly ïntimidating” at times. Wenger was asked what his thoughts were after the match: “My first answer is that we should have won the game.” he replied.

“The second, it keeps us still in a strong position in the race for the top four. Basically, the game was very intense physically. I felt that in the first half the referee didn’t deal at all well with the intimidating physical challenges, but that we responded well to the physicality. We had fantastic commitment. It was detrimental a little to the fluency of our game, but we kept going and had good concentration. .......Read the full article here

Arsene Wenger watched his Arsenal side lose points to a direct rival at the top of the Premiership for the second week in a row, mostly due to another totally inept first half of the game.

Yet again the Gunners rallied in the second half but the damage had already been done and they had little chance to reverse the deficit. Wenger tried to galvanise the team during the break, and bemoaned the bad startsaid after the game: “Tactically we changed some things.” he said. .......Read the full article here

I know that Arsenal should have done a lot better after going down to 10 men against Manchester City today, but the players were furious and it is hard to calm down sometimes when you feel you have been cheated. It is not the first time that the Gunners have been on the wrong side of some dubious decisions at the hands of the same referee, and I wonder if he has it in for Arsenal for some reason. .......Read the full article here

The West Bromwich Albion manager Steve Clarke thinks that his team played well enough to earn a point at the Emirates yesterday, but they were denied any chance of taking something from the game thanks to some dodgy refereeing decisions from Mike Jones (and few Arsenal fans would disagree with him!)

Steve Clarke said: “There was zero contact, it wasn’t even close.

“There was clear daylight between Reid and Cazorla.”

“I’m not sure what the ref saw. It was a bad decision and changed the shape of the afternoon.

“It could’ve been a nervous afternoon for Arsenal, at 0-0 they hadn’t created much.” .......Read the full article here

David Moyes saw his Everton team fight back bravely after going 1-0 behind in the first minute of last night’s game, and he thinks that Everton deserved all three points and would have got them if the ref hadn’t have been so lenient on Arsenal.

After Walcott’s brilliant opening goal, Everton made a concerted assault on the Arsenal goal, and Szczesny had to pull off some excellent saves before and after Fellaini’s deserved equaliser, but perhaps the most telling moment was when Arteta pulled down Steven Pienaar in the second half.

Moyes thinks that it was a certain penalty and that the referee salvaged the point for Arsenal. He said: “It was a really difficult night for us with the officials,” .......Read the full article here

When you lose and you have been denied a penalty or had one given against you, there will always be fans and pundits who make a point of talking about it. Arsenal today did not get many decisions going their way, but they didn’t play well so the refereeing did not get analyzed too much, but there were some crucial important decisions to make today. I think that the referee could easily have kept his red card in his pocket and let the game run, and the result could have been different. .......Read the full article here

Refereeing Decisions Damaging the Beautiful Game By BD

At the end of the working week, millions of people around the globe wait in anticipation for Saturday afternoons as the Barclays Premiership takes centre stage with girlfriends and wives across the world hating the creation of this beautiful game we call football. We watch it, weekend in, weekend out, of course we all have that one team that we support, live and breathe, in our case that’s Arsenal. However events over this past weekend has led me to write this based on football presently, instead of just focusing on Arsenal. Let’s give our boys a mention here though, it was by no means pretty and we could sense the tension at the Emirates even way down here in South Africa, but we got the three points at the end of the day, I’m happy with that, for now… .......Read the full article here

Balotelli gets away with it! by KJ

Some shocking news has filtered its way onto twitter. Mario Balotelli will not receive any retrospective action after his horrific tackle on Alex Song during the 1-0 win against Man City at the Emirates. According to the FA, an official saw the incident and decided it was not worth producing a card and hence did not communicate it to Martin Atkinson (providing he wasn’t the actual official who saw it).

It is ridiculous that the FA have decided not to charge that temperamental thug, Balotelli. I don’t understand why they religiously stick by the rule which states ‘Retrospective action can only be taken in scenarios where none of the Match Officials saw the players coming together. The normal scenarios in which retrospective action is taken are for ‘off the ball’ incidents.’. .......Read the full article here

Arsene Wenger saw his team make a gallant effort to pull back from a 4-0 deficit against AC Milan last night, but he felt that Arsenal had to play against a biased referee as well as the Italian giants.

Wenger was so incensed that he chased the Slovenian referee Damir Skomina down the tunnel after the game after he only played three minutes of added time at the end of the 90 minutes.

Wenger also slammed Skomina in his post-match comments. He said: “I was not happy with the referee tonight because I felt he gave many free kicks in the middle of the park. Every time MIlan’s players went down a free kick was given to them, and they sensed that very quickly and used it very well.” .......Read the full article here

Arsene Wenger saw his team go from 1-0 up with six minutes to go against Fulham, and then collapse to a 2-1 defeat with the winner coming in the second minute of added time.

Johann Djourou was sent off for a second yellow 13 minutes before the end which led Wenger to bring on Sebastien Squillaci to shore up the beleaguered defence but not even the mighty Super Squill could stop Fulham getting two goals in the last ten minutes.

Arsene Wenger said his team were tired after playing two days previously and slammed the referee for giving Arsenal “nothing at all” and cited FOUR games where Arsenal should have got a penalty. .......Read the full article here

Arsene Wenger saw his team’s hopes of winning the Premier League recede even further when they drew with Liverpool yesterday, Arsenal’s third home draw in a row.

It’s not been a good week all-in-all, what with the government making all US online Poker sites close down, and fulltilt poker shuts down USA players, but I was hoping for better news on the Arsenal front.

It’s not like Liverpool didn’t do their level best to give Arsenal every chance. They started the game with a 18 year-old at right-back (in his second senior game ever), when Aurelio went off injured they put on a 17 year-old youth player, when Andy Carroll went off they put on a 19 year-old. By the end of the game I reckon Liverpools average age must have been even lower than Arsenal’s for a change! .......Read the full article here