EPL - Arsenal vs Aston Villa - 17/08/13 - 3:00 PM

[Jury]

@Mark - Don't be sick of seeing with your eyes. None of us like to solely blame the refs influence as the reason we didn't pick up at least a point, and it's a very rare occurrence, thankfully, but once you start ignoring it you're fcked. It makes things easier to digest, but it's denial.

Be angry, Fck hoes! :wink:

 

[Jury]

It's arrogant because it's this view that people would care so much about wanting Arsenal to lose. Why would this ref give a **** who won that match?
It's the view that nobody wants you to win and people are conspiring to not make it happen.

See, you're now blowing it out of proportion and making stuff up to make a point and defend the 'arrogant' accusation. Someone as paranoid as me could become quite suspicious.... Keep your hands where I can see them.

Ive focussed very much on this game and this ref during this debate/argument.

 

[GG8]

Fair enough the ref was piss poor, my biggest gripe was Vlaar not getting his marching orders after two clear yellow card challenges compared two Kos's two debatable ones, but our problems stem from the change in make-up of our sides over the past decade.

On a day like this, where a ref is letting the game get away from him, we should have defenders or midfielders who will go through a couple of Villa players (that Abonglawhore rat for one) to let them know were not gonna be pushed around for ninety minutes. Hell, we might pick up a few yellows, but the opponent knows the game will be played how we decide it should be played, we need to earn the right to play possession football in this league.

Instead we have yapping forwards like Theo and Giroud, too worried about their hair and appearance and reputation. Midfielders like Jack, who picks up silly yellows for handbags and defenders like Kos, who through no fault of his own has to make last ditch tackles because we let the game get away from us.

De Rossi, Fellaini, Rooney and Suarez please, then we will see who wants to bring the physical game to us.

 

[The_Playmaker]

Before watching the match I had read an heard a lot about it. Also heard from two Arsenal fans who actually went to the match stating that fans turned on Wenger after the third goal.

I watched the full match yesterday. I don't think Villa kicked us at all. It's the premiership, those tackles are expected and to be honest if I was going to play against a team like Arsenal away from home, disrupting their rhythm and hitting them on the break would be the main aspects of my plan.

Wilshere was getting tackled, but what annoyed me more was Ramsey. If you are not good enough or strong enough to take on your man and ride tackles, then don't run with the ball. It is that simple. Take the touch and move it on. Ramsey has once again complicated his game by repeatedly turning and not releasing the ball fast enough. If we just moved the ball and got the ball to Rosicky, the only player who seems capable of driving forward apart from Chamberlain, then we would have been more successful.

Their first penalty was a penalty. Why he allowed advantage I had no idea. The second penalty from the referees angle was a penalty. The ball didn't really deviate, but having said that Koscielny should have stayed on his feet. The one decision that was ridiculous was the sending off, but why is he diving in anyway? The Ox got injured with a needless 50/50, going to ground for what? After getting to the ball first on the ground what would he have accomplished while being on the floor, on his own, surrounded by 4 Villa players.

Arsenal lost their heads. They had no patience. The probing was useless, only Rosicky provided a spark not to mention Walcott being invisible. Add to that the ridiculous lack of shape in the middle of the park and we wre obviously going to get ripped to shreds. Anyone watch the Napoli game? Carbon copy with the same midfield pairing. Saying they are too offensive minded is one thing, personally I think they are both selfish.

People forget Arteta is an offensive player, yet he is mature, so he is able to curb is will to go forward. When Agbonlahor waltzed through our defence Ramsey was pressurising the Villa centre half. Wasn't he meant to be holding? I have no time to defend selfish players. The referees decisions wouldn't have mattered if we had done our job properly. Villa aren't the best defensively, yet we scored one goal.

Bad luck also contributed, both full backs going off the pitch is ridiculous, but so is Walcott losing the ball in his own half because he is too arrogant to release it and thinks he won't get out-muscled. I am really sick of this mentality. It was if they were saving themselves for Wednesday. No fight, no determination.Players going missing, players just doing their own thing.

Now tonight they will probably go out and win, with a good defensive shape and effort, then we will probably lose at Fulham only for the excuse to be 'we dropped physically in the second half'.

 

[Jury]

We had more attempts on goal

No you didn't.

Just sayin'

Wrong.

16 to your 9, FWIW.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23644714" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23644714</a>

 

[Stevo the Villan]

We had more attempts on goal

No you didn't.

Just sayin'

Wrong.

16 to your 9, FWIW.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23644714" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23644714</a>" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You said "shots on goal"
Does that not mean shots on target?

Shots on target it's either 4 vs 4 or 4 vs 6 (depending on if you count penalties or not)

 

[Stevo the Villan]

The only questionable decisons Villa had against them was the Luna yellow card and a freekick against them for a dive by Wilshere.

Simply not true.

They were two of the major ones, again you've left out Sczesny staying on the pitch, but we were up in arms in the first half for a string of ****ty decisions against us.
Admittedly that died down in the second half when we got the better of a few but to say there were only 2 decisions is just plain wrong.

(Of course all of those were left out of that nice compilation video posted earlier, giving a nice balanced view )

that's surely a joke.
i spoke to some of your supporters after the game and even they thought the ref was ultra harsh / lenient (whichever way you look at it)
still maybe they were just appeasing me as i wasn't in the best of moods!

None of what you say here contradicts anything I've previously said.

I can't be bothered to explain it again.

 

[MDGoonah41]

hopefully this thread gets to 100 pages. just keep discussing it from now until the end of the season

 

[Stevo the Villan]

 

[Cruisio]

I was bored so Im back again.

Why can't you understand that sometimes....sometimes a referee can influence a game in such a away that it can cost you at least a point, regardless of well you play?

You conceded in an earlier post that this was the case, in your opinion, in Barcelona, when the worst thing the ref done was send off RvP.... yet we had something like 25% possession over there and were murdered?? (you say we were 'playing well' )

Why is it different here?

By your own logic, you'd have to agree with me.

See heres your first mistake, you seem to equate "playing well" with how much possession a team has (you even tried to use that in your argument got why we were better against Villa)

It isn't always the case and you can tell that purely from watching the game. What are you doing with that possession, in what areas of the pitch is it? Chelsea used to allow us the ball, thus we'd have far more possession, but it always a ploy because they knew as long as they let us have it in the wide areas we wouldn't do anything and they'd hit us on the counter time and time again (a tactic that still works agains us)

We played well against Barca because before RvP got sent off we were defending very well and limited them to a few chances, yes attacking wise we were terrible, but we contained them for most of that game, we were playing well.

I already agreed with you that sometimes the ref can cost you points, of course they can, but he wasn't the biggest reason on Saturday (I didn't say it wasn't a factor), to believe so makes you (not specifically you) look like desperate RAWK or glory glory posters

People have basically completely missed the point of the original post and it's now become "How can you not think he had a bad game and screwed us!? Raahhh"

 

[Cruisio]

To be honest though we've discussed it to death and i'm bored of it now, we're never going to agree but that's fine, let's just hope we're not having the same debate after tonight

 

[Jury]

I was bored so Im back again.

Why can't you understand that sometimes....sometimes a referee can influence a game in such a away that it can cost you at least a point, regardless of well you play?

You conceded in an earlier post that this was the case, in your opinion, in Barcelona, when the worst thing the ref done was send off RvP.... yet we had something like 25% possession over there and were murdered?? (you say we were 'playing well' )

Why is it different here?

By your own logic, you'd have to agree with me.

See heres your first mistake, you seem to equate "playing well" with how much possession a team has (you even tried to use that in your argument got why we were better against Villa)

That's not my mistake at all! Arsenal were the better side, irrespective of our 64% possession and 16-9 attempts stat. We bossed the game from start to finish ffs. We were the more likely side to score when we had 10 men! Oh, Villa were merely lying in wait... That's ridiculous! You're trying too hard to make a non-existent case here.

We played well against Barca because before RvP got sent off we were defending very well and limited them to a few chances, yes attacking wise we were terrible, but we contained them for most of that game, we were playing well.

We didn't have the ball long enough to know if we were 'playing well' or not. We didn't have the ball!

They had 67% possession. They had 13 shots on our goal to our ZERO.

Defending with your life because you have no other option doesn't equate 'to playing well'. Christ!

And anyway, we're only talking about Barca because you used that game as an example of a ref literally taking the game away from us....yet you're adamant that didn't happen on Saturday. To say that's inconsistent would be quite an understatement.

 

[MDGoonah41]

 

[Cruisio]

I didn't even bother to read that Jury as I know i'd be tempted to reply

For now let's leave the dead horse flogged

 

[Jury]

Get the **** in. I won again.

 

[future heroes]

Two of the best teams in the world going head to head, you'd expect it to be a tight game and, as a result, a dodgy refereeing performance would of course effect the game.

What I'm saying is, if Aston Villa are so awful (which Jury indicated by assuring us we'd be relegated this season), why was the game so finely poised as to allow for a couple of bad decisions to change the outcome so dramatically?

I'm not saying the ref DIDN'T affect the game. What I'm asking is shouldn't you be more concerned with why it mattered rather than why it happened?

Injustice is injustice no matter the quality of the teams.

I have not said anything about the quality of the Aston Villa team in this discussion. I expected a fairly even opening league game where we narrowly would win or at least get a draw.

We have had better teams in the past, but it used to be tight in the opening game of the previous seasons as well, except for two matches against Everton. Here are our ten last season openers in reversed chronological order. Even our better teams would have struggled with a couple of bad decisions.

2013/14 Aston Villa H 1-3 L
Sunderland H 0-0 D
Newcastle A 0-0 D
Liverpool A 1-1 D
Everton A 6-1 W
WBA H 1-0 W
Fulham H 2-1 W
Aston Villa H 1-1 D
Newcastle H 2-0 W
Everton A 4-1 W
2003/2004 Everton H 2-1

 

[darkgunner]

Looks like the refs decided to give Villa their fair share of "bad luck" tonight. Some poor decisions made vs Chelsea.

 

[future heroes]

Looks like the refs decided to give Villa their fair share of "bad luck" tonight. Some poor decisions made vs Chelsea.

They should be "more concerned with why it mattered rather than why it happened" anyway if we were to follow Stevo's reasoning above (although he only applies that "logic" when your team is supposed to win comfortably)

As I said above: injustice is injustice no matter the quality of the teams.

 

[fabo]

Just seen some of the incidents on the highlights. Ridiculous. Terry with a blatant handball in the box - no pen given. Ivanovic not sent off despite fouling constantly, then scores the winner. He kicked Benteke in the head while on a yellow card.

Looks like Cech bailed Chelsea out a few times.

 

[Stevo the Villan]

Looks like the refs decided to give Villa their fair share of "bad luck" tonight. Some poor decisions made vs Chelsea.

They should be "more concerned with why it mattered rather than why it happened" anyway if we were to follow Stevo's reasoning above (although he only applies that "logic" when your team is supposed to win comfortably)

As I said above: injustice is injustice no matter the quality of the teams.

Once again you've totally, TOTALLY missed the point.

I never said it wasn't injustice and I never said it was right. I merely said if I were you I'd be more worried as to why your team hadn't performed better against us IF (and it's big if because I don't believe it) we're supposedly such a **** team.

Look at it this way.

If I was racing Mo Farah in a 5k race. We get to the last 100 metres and Mo is just ahead of me, let's say by 10 metres. My mate runs out of the crowd and trips up Mo, and I sprint the last 100m to win the race

I'm a **** for doing it, it's injustice, it's not right.
But surely Mo, a world class runner, shouldn't have allowed himself to be beaten by an overweight, unfit football fan in the last 100m of a race? he should have been far enough in front that tripping up didn't matter. HE should have finished ages ago and not even worrying about it. If I were Mo Farah I'd be asking myself why I wasn't far enough ahead so that tripping over even mattered.

That is my point. I'm not saying, and never have said that the ref's decision were right. I've never said you shouldn't be upset by the decisions.

I've merely said that if we're a team that's going to get relegated (which we're not, but this all started from The Jury saying we were) then IN MY OPINION you should be more worried about why the game was poised at 1-1 allowing for a dodgy penalty decision to change the game.

As for the Chelsea game, in the running analogy we're still the overweight, unfit one. But somehow we've managed to stay level with Mo Farah all the way to the end, and then it's us that are tripped over in the final straight. We dont' have to ask ourselves why we weren't far enough in front for it not to matter because we shouldn't be out in front. We're the underdog. We've done well to even be in that position.


And again, this is all very amusing to talk about seeing as Arsenal should have been down to 10 men for the majority of the game anyway, which means all this should really be irrelevant.