I don't usually whine about refereeing, but this game was a prime example of an official deciding to become the star and ruining a very good game. There were two penalty decisions to make, both of which could have gone either way. After his VAR reviews, he did not award one to Arsenal but did to City, after originally waving them off. Then he really got into the match, awarding Gabriel two questionable yellows in five minutes to put us down a man with the score 1-1 and 31 minutes to play in normal time. It was only a matter of time, and the Cityzens made it unnecessary for Atwell to give them another PK (which I suspect he'd have found a reason to do if at all possible) when a hopeful ball into the box fortuitously fell to Rodri, who tucked it away under pressure.
Arsenal's home fans were livid, and disgracefully but understandably littered the field with water bottles after this fantastic performance from their men against the champions, who have now won eleven games in a row. They stayed to sing to their team despite the loss, for in truth they outplayed City and had every reason to believe this game was stolen from them by dodgy officiating. City had two shots on goal all game, one a penalty, and both went in.
Few expected Arsenal to get anything out of this game. The result leaves us vulnerable to being passed by both Spuds and ManU with their games in hand. However, if we play like this the rest of the season, we'll do very well, at least in games Atwell does not referee.
I was disappointed in the penalty kick call when both players were tussling each other and fell. I also thought a no call would have been more appropriate, but the Arsenal player grabbed the MC player's shirt while falling, which apparently led to the call going to MC. Bad day all around with another unimpressive performance by CP.
ReplyDeleteFeedspot Today claims Newcastle is trying raid Arsenal for four players.
ReplyDeleteThe transfer rumor mill is going full blast now. We're losing Ainsley Maitland-Niles to Roma on loan, and we'll probably loan out a couple other players. We'd love to get an offer for Aubameyang, and would listen to one for Nketieh. Arsenal wants a good striker, but so does everyone else. We'll be short in January because of the African Cup of Nations, like several other big teams.
DeleteAll in all, I certainly agree that the ref was overly hard on Arsenal, and I am usually a defender of refs.
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