so this agenda thing.

[Didsbury Dave]

after 38 minutes both teams had two players booked so that respect both teams were walking tightropes

i will add by half time we had another two bookings

but it certainly wasn't all one way

The way we play doesn't help our cause any either. The two most relentlessly punished fouls in the game now are going through the back of players and the cynical pull back to stop the opposition counterattacking. We play the highest defensive line in the league, with the back 4 defending on the front foot, trying to get in in front of the opposition forwards. Fouls and yellow cards are an inevitable consequence of this.

I also don't subscribe to the notion that referees are cheats. They may be shit, they may succumb to pressure, they may make mistakes, but deliberate cheating? Nah. Even Clattenfuck was pretty reasonable for the first 45 down at the Emirates the other day and for a supposed rag he had a nice line in awarding penalties against them this weekend. The notion also that Mike Dean 'cheated' us against Chelsea is too risible for words. Over the course of the last 10 years he's given us more soft decisions than any other referee on the planet. Some you win, some you lose.
There are 2 or 3 exceptions however. Mason and Taylor are rags, it's that simple. Taylor even used to go to the Swamp to watch them as a kid, and yet they pass themselves off as Bolton and Altrincham fans in order to officiate at the Etihad and Old Nafford, and they never give us anything. We really should make more of a fuss about those two. The only other referee to consistently grind my gears over the course of the last 10 years was, ironically (given that some City fans seemed determined to venerate him) was Mark fucking Halsey. From Gillingham to his retirement, he diddled us left, right and centre.

You're making subjective assertions to justify our high card count I'm presenting you with facts. The team with the highest amount of possession gets the 2nd highest amount of yellow cards and that doesn't in any way strike you as strange? I would suggest it probably bucks any trend since these type of stats were collected. Clattenburg gave two penalties to Leicester that were penalties and neither of them were game defining at the point they were taken.

Zabaleta's second foul was a foul nothing more, nothing less. He didn't leave the floor, raise his foot stop in a professional manner a promising attack. He simply attempted to get round costa to win the ball and fouled him in the process. Dean for whatever reason saw that as an opportunity to send our player off at precisely the moment we started to look like we would go on and win the match.

Let's take Bayern munichs booking count for last season who equally play a high pressing game, they accrued 45 bookings last season so that would seem to negate that theory.

I'll give you my interpretation, we get booked for tackles that are nothing more than fouls and in many cases are a result of players throwing themselves to the floor to win fouls and the referees are looking for any reason to book our players that immediately puts them treading a tightrope to not get booked for the remainder of the game and stifling their game in the process.

In the face of pretty damning statistics you continue to try and defend the status quo. Unbelievable.

I enjoyed your use of "unbelievable" as though he's the crackpot with the wild conspiracy theory, not you.

Funny.

 

[George Hannah]

The way we play doesn't help our cause any either. The two most relentlessly punished fouls in the game now are going through the back of players and the cynical pull back to stop the opposition counterattacking. We play the highest defensive line in the league, with the back 4 defending on the front foot, trying to get in in front of the opposition forwards. Fouls and yellow cards are an inevitable consequence of this.

I also don't subscribe to the notion that referees are cheats. They may be shit, they may succumb to pressure, they may make mistakes, but deliberate cheating? Nah. Even Clattenfuck was pretty reasonable for the first 45 down at the Emirates the other day and for a supposed rag he had a nice line in awarding penalties against them this weekend. The notion also that Mike Dean 'cheated' us against Chelsea is too risible for words. Over the course of the last 10 years he's given us more soft decisions than any other referee on the planet. Some you win, some you lose.
There are 2 or 3 exceptions however. Mason and Taylor are rags, it's that simple. Taylor even used to go to the Swamp to watch them as a kid, and yet they pass themselves off as Bolton and Altrincham fans in order to officiate at the Etihad and Old Nafford, and they never give us anything. We really should make more of a fuss about those two. The only other referee to consistently grind my gears over the course of the last 10 years was, ironically (given that some City fans seemed determined to venerate him) was Mark fucking Halsey. From Gillingham to his retirement, he diddled us left, right and centre.

You're making subjective assertions to justify our high card count I'm presenting you with facts. The team with the highest amount of possession gets the 2nd highest amount of yellow cards and that doesn't in any way strike you as strange? I would suggest it probably bucks any trend since these type of stats were collected. Clattenburg gave two penalties to Leicester that were penalties and neither of them were game defining at the point they were taken.

Zabaleta's second foul was a foul nothing more, nothing less. He didn't leave the floor, raise his foot stop in a professional manner a promising attack. He simply attempted to get round costa to win the ball and fouled him in the process. Dean for whatever reason saw that as an opportunity to send our player off at precisely the moment we started to look like we would go on and win the match.

Let's take Bayern munichs booking count for last season who equally play a high pressing game, they accrued 45 bookings last season so that would seem to negate that theory.

I'll give you my interpretation, we get booked for tackles that are nothing more than fouls and in many cases are a result of players throwing themselves to the floor to win fouls and the referees are looking for any reason to book our players that immediately puts them treading a tightrope to not get booked for the remainder of the game and stifling their game in the process.

In the face of pretty damning statistics you continue to try and defend the status quo. Unbelievable.

I enjoyed your use of "unbelievable" as though he's the crackpot with the wild conspiracy theory, not you.

Funny.

and I enjoyed your use of the word 'crackpot' for similar reasons

 

[tonea2003]

You're making subjective assertions to justify our high card count I'm presenting you with facts. The team with the highest amount of possession gets the 2nd highest amount of yellow cards and that doesn't in any way strike you as strange? I would suggest it probably bucks any trend since these type of stats were collected. Clattenburg gave two penalties to Leicester that were penalties and neither of them were game defining at the point they were taken.

Zabaleta's second foul was a foul nothing more, nothing less. He didn't leave the floor, raise his foot stop in a professional manner a promising attack. He simply attempted to get round costa to win the ball and fouled him in the process. Dean for whatever reason saw that as an opportunity to send our player off at precisely the moment we started to look like we would go on and win the match.

Let's take Bayern munichs booking count for last season who equally play a high pressing game, they accrued 45 bookings last season so that would seem to negate that theory.

I'll give you my interpretation, we get booked for tackles that are nothing more than fouls and in many cases are a result of players throwing themselves to the floor to win fouls and the referees are looking for any reason to book our players that immediately puts them treading a tightrope to not get booked for the remainder of the game and stifling their game in the process.

In the face of pretty damning statistics you continue to try and defend the status quo. Unbelievable.

I enjoyed your use of "unbelievable" as though he's the crackpot with the wild conspiracy theory, not you.

Funny.

and I enjoyed your use of the word 'crackpot' for similar reasons

similarly your use of crackpot amused me no end

 

[Didsbury Dave]

You're making subjective assertions to justify our high card count I'm presenting you with facts. The team with the highest amount of possession gets the 2nd highest amount of yellow cards and that doesn't in any way strike you as strange? I would suggest it probably bucks any trend since these type of stats were collected. Clattenburg gave two penalties to Leicester that were penalties and neither of them were game defining at the point they were taken.

Zabaleta's second foul was a foul nothing more, nothing less. He didn't leave the floor, raise his foot stop in a professional manner a promising attack. He simply attempted to get round costa to win the ball and fouled him in the process. Dean for whatever reason saw that as an opportunity to send our player off at precisely the moment we started to look like we would go on and win the match.

Let's take Bayern munichs booking count for last season who equally play a high pressing game, they accrued 45 bookings last season so that would seem to negate that theory.

I'll give you my interpretation, we get booked for tackles that are nothing more than fouls and in many cases are a result of players throwing themselves to the floor to win fouls and the referees are looking for any reason to book our players that immediately puts them treading a tightrope to not get booked for the remainder of the game and stifling their game in the process.

In the face of pretty damning statistics you continue to try and defend the status quo. Unbelievable.

I enjoyed your use of "unbelievable" as though he's the crackpot with the wild conspiracy theory, not you.

Funny.

and I enjoyed your use of the word 'crackpot' for similar reasons

Ah, crackpots. You're not the only one, George, to be fair to you. Every club has them. Like peas in a pod, and the internet gives them a voice:

<a class="postlink" href="http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/33620" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/33620</a>

Carry on fellas. Two weeks ago FIFA, last week the media, this week refs. What's next? Watch this space...

 

[tonea2003]

I don't agree with your final assessment as the bookings were not evenly distributed

Fernandinho was rightly booked for a professional foul when stopping a quick Chelsea break, this impacted on his choice in the second half when he didn't do the same thing which lead to Chelsea recycling the ball for thei goal. Had he have made a foul he would have rightly been sent off.

My beef is with a referee who was not even handed in this manner as Fabregas did almost identical fouls to stop City breaks on the attack, once in the first half and then twice in the second half within a minute of each other, which makes it all the more galling.

The ref was right to book Ferdy and this put enough doubt in his mind not to do it again, leading to a goal. The ref should have don't the same to Fabregas which potentially would have stopped him repeating the offence.

c'mon mate you can't have it both ways!
if ferna was rightly booked the timing is irrelevant
the other 3 were booked in a 8 minute period up to the 38th minute
mike dean set his stall out wrongly by being too card happy too early if he had carried on as was then we would have had 7 v 7 by the end, hence your fabregas issue
he had a bad day at the office

I'm not having it both ways, unless you are seeing something I didn't post?

He was right to book Ferdy, end of

He was wrong to allow Fabregas to go unpunished for the same offence on three separate occasions

How is that having it both ways? I want the ref to be fair, Dean was far from it. To say he had a bad day office is to allow the likes of him and Clattenberg to do this regularly and get away with it.

If I acted as impartially as Dean did on Sunday at put it down to a bad day at the office, I'd now have a grievance from the union on my desk.

for what he was booking players for in the latter part of the first half then all 11 on each side would have been booked by the end of the match
he had made a rod for his own back so let a few go he shouldn't have
not sure what you mean by not evenly distributed, numbers wise or time wise?

 

[franksinatra]

We got 72 yellows equal with Stoke and only Villa getting more yellows, this despite having the best possession stats in the whole league. So we have the ball more than any other team yet still manage to rack up the second highest card count.

That is a total and utter anomaly, that can only be explained by biased refereeing.

The other critical factor on this is the timing of the yellow cards, early yellows should obviously carry more weight if you are going to score discipline, because you are playing with a the threat of a red for more of the game. Stats on this would very interesting. It stinks and after Sundays game it stinks even more.

after 38 minutes both teams had two players booked so that respect both teams were walking tightropes

i will add by half time we had another two bookings

but it certainly wasn't all one way

The way we play doesn't help our cause any either. The two most relentlessly punished fouls in the game now are going through the back of players and the cynical pull back to stop the opposition counterattacking. We play the highest defensive line in the league, with the back 4 defending on the front foot, trying to get in in front of the opposition forwards. Fouls and yellow cards are an inevitable consequence of this.

I also don't subscribe to the notion that referees are cheats. They may be shit, they may succumb to pressure, they may make mistakes, but deliberate cheating? Nah. Even Clattenfuck was pretty reasonable for the first 45 down at the Emirates the other day and for a supposed rag he had a nice line in awarding penalties against them this weekend. The notion also that Mike Dean 'cheated' us against Chelsea is too risible for words. Over the course of the last 10 years he's given us more soft decisions than any other referee on the planet. Some you win, some you lose.
There are 2 or 3 exceptions however. Mason and Taylor are rags, it's that simple. Taylor even used to go to the Swamp to watch them as a kid, and yet they pass themselves off as Bolton and Altrincham fans in order to officiate at the Etihad and Old Nafford, and they never give us anything. We really should make more of a fuss about those two. The only other referee to consistently grind my gears over the course of the last 10 years was, ironically (given that some City fans seemed determined to venerate him) was Mark fucking Halsey. From Gillingham to his retirement, he diddled us left, right and centre.

I wrote exactly the same thing about the way we play a number of pages back. Being aggressive in the challenge to win the ball back, rather than defending deep and inviting teams on, will naturally result in mistimed challenges. Its natural we run the risk of picking up yellow cards playing this way.

Clattenburg was a closet red one week ago and Mike Dean was a good ref. We have heard little of Clattenburgs bias this week and now Dean is part of the conspiracy. Who got to him over the last week?

 

[cheddar404]

I enjoyed your use of "unbelievable" as though he's the crackpot with the wild conspiracy theory, not you.

Funny.

and I enjoyed your use of the word 'crackpot' for similar reasons

Ah, crackpots. You're not the only one, George, to be fair to you. Every club has them. Like peas in a pod, and the internet gives them a voice:

<a class="postlink" href="http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/33620" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/33620</a>

Carry on fellas. Two weeks ago FIFA, last week the media, this week refs. What's next? Watch this space...

Jesus. They make us sound normal on here.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

I wrote exactly the same thing about the way we play a number of pages back. Being aggressive in the challenge to win the ball back, rather than defending deep and inviting teams on, will naturally result in mistimed challenges. Its natural we run the risk of picking up yellow cards playing this way.

Clattenburg was a closet red one week ago and Mike Dean was a good ref. We have heard little of Clattenburgs bias this week and now Dean is part of the conspiracy. Who got to him over the last week?

I saw that post last night and agreed with it, Frank, but couldn't respond as my Ipad was going crazy. It's actually a discussion which merits a new thread because it gives the manager difficult decisions.

Against Liverpool and Newcastle the only real pressure they had were freekicks around our box, for the reason you gave.

The goal Stoke scored was because we didn't dive in and give a foul away.

the players are walking a bit of a tightrope. When we start to score goals properly, which will happen, it will be much less of an issue of course.

 

[Latics Fan SJK]

Yep. Still mental in here.

 

[George Hannah]

...The goal Stoke scored was because we didn't dive in and give a foul away..

you will recall that Fernandino had already been booked in accordance with the agenda (possibly) - otherwise Diouf would have been in a heap crying for his Mame