The ProRef joke writes itself
I do not want to hear another word from rival fans – City in particular – about how Arsenal ‘get all the decisions’ or ‘have ProRef in their pockets’ after what I witnessed yesterday.
“ProRef”….ha! If that isn’t the most ironic rebrand you’ve ever seen…
That decision by the VAR yesterday was as bad as the “forgot to draw the lines” nonsense we had to deal with at home to Brentford in 2022/23. It was a shambolic ‘process,’ and whilst United fans might be spitting feathers, we also have cause for grievance. If this season goes down to the last point and there’s one point in it between City and us, you can legitimately say that it is undermined by a clear helping hand that 115 Charges FC has been given. Forget the fact that Haaland looked to the whole world to be offside anyway, but Enzo Fernandez NOT interfering with play? Farcical.
We all like ot look for our conspiracies, and once again it’s Michael Oliver who was officiating in favour of City, but to be fair to him, in this instance, I think it’s not on him. The VAR needs to help him out here; he has no real control over whether to give this or not. He’s relying on his lino and the VAR, and whilst the lino gave the offside call, the VAR got involved, and I’m afraid it failed in its duty. Once again. So this weekend we’ve had VAR deliver a shocking decision against us for the penalty on Konsa, then our main title rivals benefit from a horrendous call that should never have stood in a million years.
Aside from that, because I could rant about it all day, I reckon what we did learn is that it is looking likely that City and Arsenal will be the two teams duking it out once again for the Premier League. Of course there’s a lot of football still left to play, we are only 10% through the season, but with Chelsea already five points off us and looking like they couldn’t keep a clean sheet if their lives depended on it, with Liverpool on six points and looking like they might have a ‘Draw FC’ season like we did when they won it two seasons back, and with Man United looking as sluggish and bereft of any kind of tactical identity unless their sitting and countering on teams, it’s already looking like some of the pre season predictions of title chases being ripped up for the tried and tested forumla of the last four years.
As for The Arsenal, it’s straight back into action tomorrow night, as Mikel Arteta heads into Suffolk to face Ipswich in the third round of the EFL Cup, and I think every single Arsenal fan on the planet knows that he’ll undertake some mass rotation. He has to. We have ourselves an opportunity to get some minutes into the legs of players who haven’t played as much football, so when Mikel Arteta does his press conference at some stage today, I suspect we’ll get hints that he plans to shuffle his deck. I’ll do a little more of a match preview tomorrow, but my initial thought about this one is that I’d love us to win it and go deeper in this competition, but only because of the size of our squad. Keeping players happy and fine-tuned when you have the squad we have feels like it is important, so playing these games as well as the others gives Mikel a chance to tune up players he would like to call on if there is an injury. So for me that means the likes of Kepa, Salmon, Hincapie, Zubimendi, Eze, Merino, maybe even Bruno given he’s only made substitute appearances, Max Dowman, Madueke, Big Vik – there’s plenty of players who need to shake off the rust, and so this is what I’m hoping Arteta hints at today.
I’d also like to know how the likes of Mosquera and White are doing, because with Timber playing a half against Sunderland, we have ourselves a fine right back returning, but we really could be easing him back into the side right now. Not for Ipswich, of course (which is why I have suggested Salmon starting tomorrow), but for Brighton next week. We can’t just wheel Timber out to play every week now after he’s only just recovered from such a lengthy injury; we could do without White being injured for weeks/months now that we have him back. They need to be sharing minutes to preserve both of them. I saw somebody suggest that they’ve never met each other, and it certainly feels like it at the moment, doesn’t it? Like Clark Kent and Superman, or something…
That will all soon become a ‘little’ clearer when he does his presser, but I’m not expecting that much clarity, given who Arteta is and how much he gives away in these things. I’ll be interested to see what questions he gets asked by the journalists about refereeing decisions this weekend. He’s not an idiot; he won’t give anyone any fuel for the fire, but I bet inside he’s seething. Especially given they’ve now released the transcript from Saturday’s game, in which the ref says, “He’s all over him at the near post facing the wrong way.” Err, no, Mr Brooks, he was looking for the ball until he had his shirt pulled by Ballard, then the VAR: “I’m happy that it’s a holding offence. The foul is confirmed. Confirming the on-field decision of penalty.” Something has to give here, surely, because now we’ve got two incidents that are so clearly wrong. I do agree with what somebody on social media said, however, which is that we all collectively need to pull tribalism out of this debate and start calling out wrong decisions when they have nothing to do with us. Obviously, the Sunderland penalty had a direct consequence for Arsenal, with the City goal an indirect consequence, but as Arsenal fans we also need to be looking at games in which we aren’t partisan, and lending our voice to wrong calls. When fan sentiment is unified and loud enough, only then will we probably see change.
I’ll leave it there for this one today, I think, and instead leave you with some bonus content if you fancy checking out Amanda, James and Scarlett on the Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday, as they did a debrief on the Sunderland win. Check it out here.