Arsenal v Middlesbrough - Saturday March 15, 5.15pm

[Rodelero]

First off, we didn't lose.

We lost the win ^.^

Second, we didn't defend a free kick like we should have.

No, but the freekick shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Third, the linesman's flag was up about an hour before Ade put the ball away.

Yes, but it wasn't offside.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decisions that led to our disallowed goal and their goal, the decisions were made and we didn't really do enough to win.

Why not? If the decisions are wrong, when the decisions were right we would have won, therefore we DID by logic do enough to deserve to win.

How anyone can argue otherwise is beyond me.

Pity. If the right decisions were made, the team which deserved to win would ALWAYS win, and that's how it should be. Does that happen in football always? No. Did that happen in our match? No.

Anyone who argues differently is, defying the definition of deserve.

 

[RocktheCasbah]

When the goal we scored was disallowed, we had another 86 minutes to score another one.

When the free kick was awarded, and I take the point that it was not a free kick, we still had the opportunity to defend it.

Arguing about whether these decisions should have been given or not is pointless. I understand your frustration, I FEEL your frustration, and yeah if the decisions had been different we would have won. But they weren't.

And I'm absolutely gutted about that.

 

[RocktheCasbah]

So, basically you're saying that because two decisions across a multitude of decisions made in a 90 minute football match, we didn't win?

Ok, fair enough. But as with the Birmingham game, there is enough talent in this team to have rendered those two decisions yesterday, and the three at Birmingham, irrelevant.

I agree that the referee was a disaster on two legs, but the bottom line is 1-1 at home to Boro, 0-0 at Wigan, 1-1 at home to Villa and the 2-2 at Birmingham is not good enough.

 

[AnthonyG]

Why not? If the decisions are wrong, when the decisions were right we would have won, therefore we DID by logic do enough to deserve to win.

But how far back are you going to go back on the free-kick goal? The play had stopped, if was down the other end of the field (thus different from a direct free-kick), and we had a chance to regroup.

Maybe things would have different if another ref had been picked, maybe it would have been different if this ref's parents didn't get that May twinkle in their eyes, maybe if the ref had had bangers for breakfast instead of cornflakes, maybe, maybe, maybe....

The thing is there was a definitive moment in your logic chain where we had an opportunity to nullify the "wrongful" awarding of the free-kick. Heck, if it was a terribly taken free-kick straight to one of our players who passed and we scored would it then have been a positive or justified the wrong done to us? Hard to say when you deal in maybes.

 

[RocktheCasbah]

Thank you, AnthonyG.

 

[Rodelero]

I understand 100% that we COULD have done x number of things to win the game, but did we deserve to win - yes. Can you therefore blame our players? Not really.

You can blame our players that they put us in the situation that the referee COULD ruin our match with a couple of shocking decisions. You can blame our players that we didn't win 5-0, or that we wouldn't have if the referee wasn't a ****, what you cannot do is blame our players because we didn't win, because they did all that they SHOULD have to do to win.

There is a single cause for what happened, and that is bad ruling on decisions.

If the referee had done what his job was to do, we would have won. Therefore the referee is the blame. Our players did what they are meant to do, they scored 2 goals, and made sure their opponents scored less than 2 goals, they therefore deserve to have won. Our players did what they are meant to do (the minimum), the referee didn't do what his job is. The referee is the one you can lay blame on, the referee is the one who caused us to lose.

Not one of our players would say that they played great yesterday, the referee on the other hand, the one who didn't do his job, says he made the right decisions, making him, not only the cause, but a blatant liar too.

 

[RocktheCasbah]

You sound like Jose Mourinho mate. Ask the people leaving with 20 minutes left if they thought we did enough to win yesterday.

 

[awooga83]

Our players didn't do enough to win yesterday thats why they didn't win, we had chances we didn't take them we had possesion but we couldn't break Boro down.

Football has humans particpating and controling it there will be errors as with everything that humans are involved in you accept that and take it into account sometimes you will benefit sometimes you won't you have to do more to ensure they don't effect you soemtimes you will be unlucky but yesterday wasn't that day we had one decision that was poor but had 80 odd minutes to do something about it we couldn't so we weren't good enough.

Otherwise Fergie made similar points about how we got our equaliser against them so we should really have lost that game by your logic.

If you play well enough these issues aren't even important the long and the short is we weren't good enough and haven't been for some time.

 

[lee1001]

The defending by Toure was shocking for their goal yesterday. The ball travelled 3/4 of the pitch and he was at least 5 yards off his man!!

I don't neccesary blame him because he hasn't been a regular fixture in the team for a while now.

The real question is should Wenger have dropped Senderos? In my mind that was a mistake.

 

[Rodelero]

You sound like Jose Mourinho mate. Ask the people leaving with 20 minutes left if they thought we did enough to win yesterday.

Do I look like Jose though?

As for asking specific people who left the ground early (**** that they are)... I don't need to.

Whether we deserved to win or not is simple:

If the rules were followed properly, would we have won?

Yes.

Therefore, we deserved to win.

I know we didn't play well, but Arsenal don't have to play well to beat Middlesbrough, we proved that yesterday because we DID deserve to win.

This is an argument over the meaning of words, you are blaming the players for one thing, I am blaming the referee for the draw because he is the direct cause of it, because if he hadn't done what he did, we'd have won, and he is the only person who did their job wrong.

You (and others) are arguing this:

Whether we deserved to win knowing that the referee could screw our game up

I am arguing this:

Whether we deserved to win

The answers are different.

Our players aren't officially ruled to play to this standard, the referee is.

 

[awooga83]

Deserving to win and winning are two different things and that is competitive sport you have to do more the deserve to win, every week the rules will not be followed properly its something that is taken for granted there will be errors all teams have to deal with it. You minimise this by being a better team and not relying on one decision to shape a game or one goal thats what the poor teams do you make sure your so good that even if there is a mistake you still win you plan for those eventualities.

 

[RocktheCasbah]

Oh my word.

We might have scored two goals yesterday, unfortunately only one of them counted. You don't get points for goals that don't count in this league.

Human error is a fact of sport, you can moan about the ref not doing his job properly, it's not going to change anything that happened yesterday.

We could talk about Eboue diving in the penalty area- again- when he could have stayed on his feet and had a shot, or attempted to cross the ball. We could talk about an Arsenal player being put through one on one and putting the ball down the keeper's throat- again. We could even talk about the depressing sight of us losing the ball on the edge of the Boro box again and again and again and again and again. But that won't change anything either.

Anyway, we could go round and round with this, you think we deserved to win. I don't, so I think it's probably best to leave it here.

 

[Gurgen]

Eboue's arm was pulled. It didn't make him fall down but it was still a penalty.

 

[algunner]

Its doesn't matter what the ref decision because the truth was we created chances and could have won the game even if they scored a goal. We had FAB missing 2 great chances in two games to win a match. So the concern is that we need to put away those chances and thats what wins a match not decisions.

I am still optismistic the fact that we created chances to score goals and win a game. That has to continue against any team and if we get the chances we will start scoring goals. Thats the great thing about this team they create chances after chances now just needs finishing them and we could be celebratingthe title and champions league.

Who know what will happen next week.

 

[Rodelero]

We might have scored two goals yesterday, unfortunately only one of them counted. You don't get points for goals that don't count in this league.

Did I say different?

Human error is a fact of sport, you can moan about the ref not doing his job properly, it's not going to change anything that happened yesterday.

Did I say different?

We could talk about Eboue diving in the penalty area- again- when he could have stayed on his feet and had a shot, or attempted to cross the ball. We could talk about an Arsenal player being put through one on one and putting the ball down the keeper's throat- again. We could even talk about the depressing sight of us losing the ball on the edge of the Boro box again and again and again and again and again. But that won't change anything either.

Did I say different?

Anyway, we could go round and round with this, you think we deserved to win. I don't, so I think it's probably best to leave it here.

But if you believe both of the goals we scored are legitimate, you also must think we deserved to win (unless you are being irrational).

Its a petty, pointless argument, but I assure you that you cannot believe that the score if the ref had done his job was 2-1 or 2-0, and at the same time believe we didn't deserve to win, unless you believe it is RIGHT that the referee made a mistake/is biased.

 

[awooga83]

It may not be right but that is life mate, it's what we all accept to be alive, humans make mistakes the world isn't perfect it isn't just football, we all know its going to happen and it does effect everybody at some point and sport is no different, we will have benefited from referees mistakes in the past and won or drawn games we shouldn't have so its swings and roundabouts.

The fact is we were only good enough to score one goal inspite of other chances and if you are relying on no mistakes being made then you will never win anything they always are made and our job is to play so they don't effect us by scoring more goals and creating more chances, we didn't do that and we didn't win.

 

[Webdesignlab]

as a fan i mightly f*d off with that attitude but the players are not motivated.. 4 draws in 4 shows that

I agree unfortunately you seem to be right. They care only about CL. If that is the case I can see some mass exodus this summer.

Obviously the guys do not want to play against Villa, Boro, Brum etc, they want Real Madrid and all the glory. Now I cannot blame them, but that is the PL for you. That is the job. They don't want the job?

 

[Webdesignlab]

And anothert thing .... man U will win the PL, but not with a far superior team. Not with a flare, but because we gave it them ... fecks me right off.

 

[dutchMasta]

But if you believe both of the goals we scored are legitimate, you also must think we deserved to win (unless you are being irrational).

Its a petty, pointless argument, but I assure you that you cannot believe that the score if the ref had done his job was 2-1 or 2-0, and at the same time believe we didn't deserve to win, unless you believe it is RIGHT that the referee made a mistake/is biased.

Why do you keep harping on this point? Since when has "deserving" to win mattered? Are you going to bang on about this when we've put in a **** performance, didn't deserve to win, and we did, thanks to an unfair goal?

We basically had our full strength team out and we were at home. We failed to create many chances, we gave them an early goal. Anyway, it's debatable whether Aliadiere was interfering with play. He wasn't really at first. It's debatable whether Eboue fouled Boateng leading up to our corner. And we were lucky to get that deflection to led to Ade's goal, and it was legit, but they ruled it out, and these type of things happen to every team.

Based on our performance, no, we didn't really deserve to win. We didn't unlock their defense as much as we should've. Dominated possession but no end product. I swear, Toure/Gallas should've put away one of their headers (other than the goal).

It feels like we've forgotten how to score using our plan A in the league.

 

[sabret00the]

Its doesn't matter what the ref decision because the truth was we created chances and could have won the game even if they scored a goal. We had FAB missing 2 great chances in two games to win a match. So the concern is that we need to put away those chances and thats what wins a match not decisions.

I am still optismistic the fact that we created chances to score goals and win a game. That has to continue against any team and if we get the chances we will start scoring goals. Thats the great thing about this team they create chances after chances now just needs finishing them and we could be celebratingthe title and champions league.

I disagree creating four shots at goal per game is neither good enough nor title worthy.