Is Arsenal Being Targeted By Referees? Wenger Thinks So!

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Arsenal’s manager Arsene Wenger seems to be very frustrated about the fact that he thinks Arsenal is being targeted by the referees who keep disadvantaging them. According to the Frenchman the late few decisions which didn’t go the correct way caused the club’s weak late form.

“I think if one team has been done badly recently it’s Arsenal,” said Wenger, “and I don’t want to speak too much about that.”

But he did:

“We were a bit unlucky with some decisions lately. Against Fulham, against Swansea, because we got the penalty [against us in the Swansea match] and God knows where it came from. It was just a good dive, and I said that after the game.

“It doesn’t mean we had to lose the game but still it was a bit unfortunate for us. At Fulham we got a penalty turned down on Gervinho – it’s the kind of thing that can happen. It went against us in the last two games.

“We want the right decisions to be made. Some people made a study of last season and we were second in the league, considering the decisions of the referees, and yet we finished fourth. It showed we were two points behind the leaders.

“(Robert) Pires once dived against Portsmouth, OK? For six months it was a story in the newspapers. (Swansea’s Nathan) Dyer dived on Sunday and nobody said a word.

“You cannot say it is exactly the same and it doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t matter when Dyer dives, why does it matter when Pires dives?

“Every team could come with complaints. It’s just a fact of the game that it happened in the last two and it’s not an excuse for us to lose the game. it’s just one of the the things that on the day didn’t go well.

“If one day you manage a club or you are a chairman of a club, you would feel exactly the same.”

Arsene might be right to some extent and a few decisions did indeed cause a few problems for him, but what he should really do is stop complaining about the referees and start forcing his team to make performances which can’t be annulled by a bad refereeing decision.

3 thoughts on “Is Arsenal Being Targeted By Referees? Wenger Thinks So!

  1. Wenger shud stop saying rubish,heaven help those who help them selfs has he help himself come to think of asistance 4rm d refrees,every every playas dat play spectacular ball has is own fan among d refrees and they do protect them in any of their match they officiated.in the up front line of (ashma)sorry arsenal whom to be proud of as 1st class player apart 4rm Rvp whom they always mark with careful,pls if wenger could hear my voice he should make sure dat in every wing a top 2 players always available 4chalenges so dat when u make sub or d oponent see whom is warming up the wing oppsition will lost concentration b4 his intro not when Miguel coming as a sub against Valencia or Nani,No back up in mancity team in barca they all are as good as defender,midfielder,winger and striker.Mr Ashma Winger shud change 4 better.

  2. “start forcing his team to make performances which can’t be annulled by a bad refereeing decision”
    That’s not always possible. A massive proportion of our goals conceded last season were penalties, and of those, my opinion is that many of them were very unlucky on us. Add to that the number of penalties that weren’t given in our favour, and you have to think that we might be doing a bit better if it weren’t for poor decisions. The Newcastle game was the tip of the iceberg: at least one very dodgy penalty, blatant inconsistency wrt red cards, and the equaliser was scored off of an incredibly poor fk decision – how any ref can believe that rosicky is strong enough to knock barton over when jumping for a header is ridiculous — it was an obvious DIVE!
    On the other hand, you had United needing a dodgy penalty to win them the league, and they avoided at least 10 clear red cards by my count. But you see, the rules are different for them, they don’t have to build a side capable of “performances which can’t be annulled by a bad refereeing decision” – their players are allowed to elbow people in the head and make last man challenges! Why is it that we have to build a team capable of winning in spite of whatever the ref throws at us, while at least one of our rivals is actually being helped by the refs??? Can you realistically expect us to overcome that battle? Especially considering most of their players were purchased for 15-30m pounds each?
    The league is getting more and more competitive, and the margins for victory continue to become more and more slender and as a result, ref decisions are becoming more and more important, and we can’t afford to keep getting the short end of it.

    All that said, I don’t think the ref was so poor against Swansea :). The penalty was dodgy but very understandable, and this was one of the very few occasions where I’ve felt we were properly beaten by a lower-league side. They outplayed us in the midfield and really ran things, so I don’t begrudge them the victory at all.
    I have to get behind wenger on his comments, because in the greater scheme of things, what he is saying is true, but that was not so much the case against Swansea, and I thought it was very harsh to say that the Swansea winger dived, when he clearly lost his balance after inadvertently stepping on Ramsey, as anyone would.

  3. Arsenal Blog- where have you been for the last three or four years? The team gets stripped of 20 points per season on average. How many penalties have Arsenal had this season? How many should we have had? Almost every game Arsenal plays- home or away- the ref gives more bad calls against them than the opposition. Statistically– how could that be possible? It can’t. After 20 games of fair reffing the odds against it happening would be in the millions. Anybody who researches the subject can quickly see the problem. Even body language experts can see the difference. The methods used are varied and comprehensive but if you imagine how you would best do it without it being obvious– that’s probably going on. Two to watch out for tomorrow would be- playing advantage which isn’t and dubious free kicks around Arsenal’s box. Why don’t the press root it out? They dare not! Papers are on the way out and soccer and celebrity are the only things keeping them going. Turkeys don’t vote for christmas– no matter how awfully the farmers treat them. Who needs to keep certain clubs above Arsenal? Answer that and you will know where the financial pressure to do this is coming from!!!

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