Before I start here, I want to take a moment to think about what Andre Gomes is going through. As he lie on the pitch on Sunday, he had to look down and see his ankle in an unnatural state. I can barely imagine the pain he must have been in but I can imagine the rehab he’s going to have to do for the next 8 months. Months of grueling, hard work, getting his legs back to full strength, then walking, then running and then kicking a ball. I can also imagine the psychological horror that he’s going to have to overcome. The next time anyone slides in on him to win the ball back, that moment will be there in his mind.
Some players will fully recover from this sort of injury and go on to play outstanding football, Aaron Ramsey for example. Some players will never fully physically recover, and suffer injuries small and large the rest of their careers, like Abou Diaby or Jack Wilshere. And some players will physically recover but never be the same mentally, pulling out of challenges, or even needing to leave the Premier League to escape the ugliness of what they have been through.
My wish for Gomes is a full recovery. He has Seamus Coleman to lean on, his teammate suffered a similar injury. And perhaps he can reach out to others like Aaron Ramsey. I’m sure he will find Ramsey a willing ear.
An an Arsenal supporter – as most of my readers are as well – I’m used to the news cycle which will now dominate the narrative of Son’s tackle on Gomes. The first step is to create a passive voice around what happened “Gomes broke his leg”; the second step is for all of the old men of football to say “it’s not even a yellow card”; the third is to whitewash the aggressor’s actions and say “he’s not that kind of player”; and the final step is to pretend that all of this is normal, just part of the game, “we don’t want to get rid of all contact”.
This is a nonsense loop and it needs to be cut off.
First, Son broke Gomes leg and he did so out of malice. I don’t think Son wanted to destroy Gomes’ ankle – only an inhuman monster like Roy Keane or Joey Barton would intend to injure his opponent – but for some reason no one is reporting on the incidents that happened leading up to that tackle. They are important to the entire context.
This was a chippy game. Spurs games are often full of snide little fouls, they are a dirty team, but this one seemed like a relegation battle. Gomes was fouled early on by Sanchez – it was a shoulder to the ribs which knocked the Portuguese player to the ground for several minutes.
And there was plenty of back and forth in this match, referee Martin Atkinson ignored a lot of fouls, refused to show yellows when they were needed and generally lost control of the game. Not even one minute before Son broke Gomes’ leg, Gomes had smacked Son in the mouth, trying to shield the Spurs player off from the ball.
Son washed his mouth out, spat out claret, got up and on the next possession, tried to foul Iwobi twice (kicking the Nigerian player from behind) and when Iwobi passed to ball to Gomes, you can see Son notices who has the ball and sprints over to get his tackle in. In old days we would say Son “saw the red mist”. Having played a fair amount of football I saw it clearly for what it was, he was trying to get a tackle in as retribution for the elbow.
And Son was distraught when he saw the damage he’d done. Like I said, he isn’t a monster. He’s not Roy Keane or Dan Smith, the lad by all accounts has a conscience. But even if you have zero intent to cause the damage that you caused, you’re still liable for the results. If you punch someone in the face and they go down and hit their head on concrete and die, you didn’t intend to kill them and you’re not guilty of murder, but you will probably be convicted of manslaughter (in the USA).
The consequences of our actions matter and matter even more so when we take those actions out of frustration or anger. It’s not as if Son wasn’t even trying to tackle Gomes, nor that it was even a particularly good challenge which just mistakenly hurt Gomes. Son tackled Gomes from behind, in almost all likelihood still spitting blood from Gomes’ elbow a minute earlier. It’s awful hard to divorce these actions from each other. Tackles from behind were outlawed because they cause more damage. And referees are instructed to give red cards for the intent of the player in question.
This is a red card all day for me. Any time a player is so intent on fouling that he twice kicks one guy, then slides in on a second guy from behind, with retribution in mind from a foul a minute earlier, it has to be a red card. That’s not “removing all contact” from the game. It’s punishing players for violent conduct. You can’t just run around kicking your opponents.
I think the punishment should be harsher than a regular three match ban given the outcome of the tackle and considering the circumstances leading up to it. I also think that we need to take a look at Spurs’ tactics and see if there’s anything systematic to the way that they play defense which led to Son breaking Gomes’ leg.
Is Mauricio Pochettino instructing his players to foul, and foul hard, in order to stop the opponents from playing? There is a lot of speculation that Spurs, Liverpool, and Man City all deploy fouling as a tactic. If so, then we have to ask whether that is any different from Tony Pulis “geeing up” his players like William Wallace in Braveheart or the way that teams like Birmingham City were routinely sent out to kick Arsenal because the “Gooners don’t like it up ’em”. If Pochettino is coaching his players to kick his opponents in order to stop play, what share of the blame does he shoulder in this?
The Laws of the Game are poorly written to address these sorts of more systemic problems. There’s room in there to ban Son for more than three games and I think he should get at least 5. But there’s nothing to stop coaches like Pochettino from sending out his players to engage in this kind of subtle cheating. That doesn’t mean the governing bodies shouldn’t try.
I’d go even farther.
If you end up mangling a persons body in this way you open yourself up to a 10 match ban. If it’s reasonable to assume that it’s a genuine accident then it’s reduced to 5 games. But if it’s reasonable to assume there was a wilful recklessnes, that it was retribution for a prior action, or if ‘going in hard’ or ‘tactical rotational fouling’ was a feature of the team’s play for that game, then the 10 match ban stands.
Excellent post. Dont want to descend into conspiracy theorising, but Eduardo got more grief from British journalists for a supposed dive, than his opponent got for breaking his leg. Like Shawcross for Ramsey, much was made of his remorse and the fact that “he’s not that kind of guy/player.”
Reporting of this kind of football thuggery needs to be zero tolerance. There’s a reason why there are variable speed limits for places like, say, streets with zebra crossings on which there are schools. A lot of injury threatening tackles are carried out, but players generally hurdle/evade etc to avoid them. Guendouzi is subjected to some really bad tackling, but the fact that he can be ball hog doesn’t mean that he deserves it.
Diaby’s story is one that brings tears to my eyes. He’s living proof that life isn’t fair. Remember that 4-4 at Newcastle when he retaliated to a bad tackle? That was the kind of flashback you mentioned.
Ramsey never really recovered, you know. Those annual soft tissue injuries are a direct result of his horrifically broken leg. You can never put back exactly that which was perfectly created, and muscles compensate/overcompensate. If you break your left tibia, you will kind of favour the right when running, won’t you? That will eventually create problems on that side (right, Doc? I’m straying from my area of expertise).
Agree with Jeremy on the 10 match ban.
The Laws of the Game are indeed poorly written, in part because trying to explicitly identify every possible event in a fluid game like Football would give us a rules book the size of a telephone directory (remember those?). The real problem lies with the application of the laws since so much is open to the referees’ interpretation. When was the last time you saw a yellow issued for “failing to respect the required distance when play is restarted with a corner kick, free kick or throw-in”, or my personal favorite, “persistent offences (no specific number or pattern of offences constitutes “persistent”)”? I don’t think Martin Atkinson was more lenient than any other referee officiating a PL game; it’s clearly policy by the FA and/or the PGMOB to cultivate a “physical” (AKA violent) nature to the English game, presumably to offer a ray of hope to the Stoke Cities and Burnleys of the League, and to play to the elements of the crowd who want to see some aggro, since they can’t easily engage in it on the terraces any more. Those who say football is a contact sport are being misleading; yes, there will be contact but it’s not integral to the game and I would argue that lack of contact is what makes the game so great. If you want contact, watch rugby (another great sport).
I was bothered by the description of what he did as “malice”. Looking it up, malice is “the desire to inflict injury, harm or suffering on another.” OK, but it goes further, “evil intent on the part of a person who commits a wrongful act injurious to others”.
I think Son was looking to get a lick in on Gomes, hurt him some. But was that “evil?” If so, I’m a very bad person. As predominantly a defensive midfielder and CB during my playing days, getting stuck in was just another day at the office, I made it a point to make sure the opposing strikers heard footsteps and were spooked about getting crunched.
It’s extremely competitive and it’s very emotional also. They’re not automatons out there. I agree with the red card and Son getting a three game suspension, but I won’t agree that what he did was malicious.
Guardiola’s team 100% commits tactical fouls to stop counter-attacks. He’s basically admitted as much.
Klopp has gone on record as saying that football to him is primarily an “emotional” game. I don’t think you have to gee up your players to commit fouls – if you just gee them up, period, they will go out there and be more aggressive in the tackle… but also run harder, be more alert, communicate more forcefully, etc.
Guendouzi basically tackled Zaha last week to prevent a counter-attack when our back field was empty. I thought it was an intelligent foul to make. Would we have preferred he let Zaha run on and score the winner?
Guendouzi basically wrapped his arms around Zaha’s torso and dragged him to the ground. It was nothing like the bad tackling Tim describes.
It was a rugby tackle and had Zaha landed wrong it could have resulted in injury. It wasn’t “malicious”, but had fortune smiled differently what if Zaha had, say, separated his shoulder? Hit his head and been concussed?
I feel for Gomes, don’t get me wrong. But what happened is pretty rare.
Shawcross on Ramsey… that was different because Shawcross had a long long history of reckless tackling before breaking Ramsey’s leg. Son doesn’t have any kind of history to compare.
Guendouzi’s tackle was precisely what sprung to mind when thinking about this earlier today. Many of us (and I include myself) have wanted Arsenal to have a ‘spoiler’ who will do that kind of thing, if only because we perceive other teams to have been doing it to us for so many years. But was Guendouzi’s tackle any worse than Son’s? There was no anger in Guendouzi’s tackle, as there was in Son’s – it was calculated in a different fashion. You could argue that makes it worse, especially were the outcome to be similar to that of the Son tackle, because – using that manslaughter analogy again, people (in the UK, at least) will sometimes be able to claim ‘heat-of-the-moment’ actions as a mitigating factor which might lead to a lighter sentence, or merely a suspended one. I agree that in an ideal world Son’s, and Guendouzi’s tackles would be outlawed. The chances of that though? Remote, to say the least. Like someone used to muse in previous years, after we’d lost a number of players to broken limbs from inarguably horrid tackles, maybe it would take a similar injury to one of England’s top stars for that to even feature on the horizon (not that I’d wish for that).
I may have misunderstood – it seems you wouldn’t want Guendouzi’s tackle struck from the game completely, so I’ll discount that from my comment!
” Would we have preferred he let Zaha run on and score the winner?”…
It’s a good question, Jack. I really despise this kind of professional foul. It’s the clearest form of cheating and I hate seeing us resort to that “tactic”. Intelligent it may be, but right it is not. Winning at any cost is a cynical and shabby philosophy in my opinion. And anyway, if we’d lost to Palace, perhaps Emery would be gone that much sooner. It’s not like the extra point is doing us much good at the moment.
But it’s very clearly not “winning at all costs”. That expression is a diving board into a real cesspool of things a team could actually do – from the very very serious like bribing referees, steroid/PED usage to insidious foot stamping or knees to the buttocks a la John Terry, and then the more tame like blatant time wasting by goalkeepers.
Tactical fouling to prevent a breakaway is a minor blemish. Guendouzi got carded and rightfully so. He took one for the team. If he’d gotten a red card I would have applauded his action.
I wonder – have you guys played? Deliberately fouling opposing players is part of the game – it’s when it gets gratuitous or results in serious injury that we know it’s gone too far. But how would you judge Patrick Vieira if he played today for an opponent? The guy was equally feared and hated for a reason. Bergkamp was no angel and was known to lay in to a defender time and again.
If we are hoping for pristine, aesthetically pure expressions of skill and athleticism there is always figure skating and rhythmic gymnastics. These are men engaged in a modern-day proxy for warfare.
Well, if you want to distinguish between different levels of cheating, go right ahead. I played for years growing up in London, and again later in Colorado for a 6-a-side indoor team, and I never deliberately fouled anyone. But then there was never much riding on the game for me; I might have played differently if I was getting six figures a week and had tens of thousands in the stands baying for blood. I’m not naive enough to think professional football will ever be “pure”, but I don’t have to condone cheating, even (especially) if it’s done by one of ours. But you applaud away…
Actually, I don’t think Son is that type of a player. A diver and a cheat for sure, but I would have him very low in the pecking order for hard fouling.
I’m no fan of Tottenham but this one, just as virtually all before , are squarely on PGMO.
Clubs will play according to the rules enforced and not written.
The PL hasn’t become the most profitable in the world for its quality of technical play.
This latest incident is just another byproduct of how the league has been selling itself to the world.
There’s a reason PL refs don’t go to World Cup or the Euros.
Am I the only one who thinks that Aurier is far more guilty than Son? I mean, sure Son goes in for the tackle, but as Gomes is falling down (and right before VAR cut down the clip), you can see Aurier going in with his foot right where Gomes’ leg snapped.
I’m not saying Son is blameless but I have the feeling that if it weren’t for Aurier, he would never have had his leg broken.
+ 1
I also share the sentiment
Son’s red card has been overturned on that basis. Aurier escapes punishment.
I think it’s a red and 3 match ban for Son for the reasons that Tim described. Given the clarity that it was Aurier who broke Gomes’ leg, it’s got to be atleast 5 match ban. Maybe it’s because my glasses are red and white but we have been at the receiving end of this stupidity one too many times to look at this objectively, unlike Tim has done.
I think both of them should get a red each: Son for carrying malicious intent desiring retribution, Aurier for “helping” him. But yeah it got overturned, this is laughable.
Anyone thinks this was a bad tackle should check out Schneiderlin tackle on De Brune a few weeks back.
It’s hard to feel for Everton and its player when they themselves employ this sort of tactic.
Yeah this is a sensitive issue for Arsenal fans. Or should be. You’ve laid out the script perfectly. It’s infuriating. I’ve come across so many articles about how badly Son is affected. While that’s probably true, surely that’s just to be expected.
It was a definite red card. Tackle from behind at that speed, with no intention of getting to the ball. I hear Spurs are appealing though, after Poch took the opportunity to rail against VAR. I hope it’s a 5 match ban which gets upped to an 8 game ban for frivolous appealing. It’s ridiculous.
But then, so is this league. They’ll probably rescind the red card. All about the big bucks baby. No one’s going to upset the applecart too much. That’s what the media narrative is about.
And bingo. Appeal successful.. Red card overturned.
YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.
What the $&*% is wrong with the FA. Son and Aurier should BOTH be done over this.
The current IFAB Laws of the Game is reasonably clear on the subject of fouls and misconduct (but naturally leaves some ‘wriggle room’).
A direct free kick is awarded if a player commits any of the following offences against an opponent – charges, jumps at, Kocks or attempts to kick, pushes, strikes or attempts to strike (including head-butt), tackles or challenges or trips or attempts to trip – in a manner that the referee considers Careless, Reckless or uses excessive force.
Careless is defined as when a player shows a lack of attention or consideration or @cts without precaution. These we would all regard as routine fouls where no card is issued.
Reckless is when a player acts with disregard to the danger to, or consequences for, an opponent and must be cautioned
Using excessive force is when a player exceeds the necessary use of force and/or endangers the safety of an opponent and must be sent off..
In this specific case excessive force was clearly used and there should be absolutely no one arguing against the red card. There are hundreds of challenges made every week that don’t break an opponents bone, any that do are demonstrably using excessive force and must be punished accordingly.
The IFAB rules are, as you say far more vague on persistent or rotational fouling and rely on referees common sense in applying the rules consistently and fairly. Sadly this task seems completely beyond the officials currently deployed by the PGMO. Whilst this group are in charge of refereeing in the PL and Football Leagues there is every prospect of more players being assaulted out of the game.
No one is “that kind of player” until they are, which I take to be one of the points in today’s post.
It was a terrible incident as remorseful as Son may be, he is squarely at fault. Years ago, a bandmate made a rash right turn in a hurry to get to the gig, hit a kid crossing the intersection and broke his leg. He wasn’t that kind of driver either. He felt terrible and of course he didn’t mean to but the punishment was swift and harsh. Lost points, a court appearance, etc. etc. Should be no different for a footballer.
I think Arseblog made a great point years ago when he said that once you’ve broken a player’s leg with this kind of retaliatory or purposefully intimidatory kind of tackle then you ARE that type of player. As in, you become a member of a group of players who’ve mangled another players body through a purposefully violent act.
I guess the reason for my thinking is that if Sky etc are going to talk about ‘that type of player’, it makes no sense if they can’t point to someone who IS ‘that type of player’ right?
Since they’ll never accuse or admit that any current or past player IS ‘that type of player’…as in the type of player who’ll purposefully go out to break someone’s leg …then it’s pointless as a measuring stick. Roy Keane literally WAS that type of player but they’d never even admit to that right? By Sky standards, nobody’s EVER going to be ‘that type of player’, even if it’s ultimately only for legal reasons.
Better that ‘that type of player’ refers to a player who, at some point, has shown themselves willing to recklessly put another player’s career in danger by going in hard enough to break a players leg and put them out of the game for months or years.
At least this way if we’re going to continue to use the phrase we can actually point to players who can be described by that label.
If tactical fouling is a mainstream method in professional football, shouldn’t the game accept that and have a cap on the number of fouls each team can commit in a game? In many ways I think it could promote attacking football, and skillful defending and also push up the skill levels of the players. If it’s said that these fouls are made for the team’s sake, shouldn’t the team be penalized for incidents that affect individuals in a far deeper way than just a victory in a game of football. Shouldn’t the club itself be penalized?
i believe the red card for a foul from behind was only for one year, circa the ’02 world cup; i don’t think it’s in the laws of the game anymore. likewise, i agree with jack in calling it malice is harsh. reckless, absolutely.
my position is this. son’s challenge is banned for a reason; to prevent these types of injuries. however, they’re normalized in the premier league because officials don’t enforce sending a player off when they happen. it reminds me of the guy in new york who was killed by a cop using an illegal choke. that officer was fired, not because he killed someone, but because he did it using an illegal choke. bottom line, whenever this type of challenge happens, a player should be sent off but he’s often not. players will continually do what officials tolerate.
the 3-game ban for violent conduct is law. should there be an exception? i believe yes. if a player executes a banned challenge and someone is seriously injured, that player should be banned additional games. as for now, it’s not the law.
the challenge guendouzi did on zaha was illegal and, rightfully, he was booked. that’s not a sending off offense. i don’t consider that cheating. it’s like suarez’ hand ball in the 2010 world cup. that was illegal and he was sent off and suspended for the next game. the challenge son executed was not only illegal, it was banned.
We better hurry up:
https://www.football-italia.net/146086/lippi-allegri-best-united
So Son’s red card gets overturned because he cried tears of contrition, give me a f****** break. Guilty as charged all day including on Sunday. “He’s not that kind of player” is as lame an excuse as fans who make monkey chants at black players and then claim not to be racists when caught. That’s is why drug dealers whose goods cause deaths are charged with murder and the drugs killed so and so, not me defense do not work.
Allegri is all wrong for us. No way. We have a fan base interested in playing attractive, attacking football with an emphasis on using and developing young players. That is not Allegri – his name may as well be Better Emery.
If we can stomach the wait, we should go hard after Erik ten Hag after the season is done. He has connections with Overmars and Bergkamp and we’d have an inside track.
I don’t disagree but can we really wait for ten Hag assuming he would want to come an Arsenal that could be in the bottom half of the table by May. Emery is a dead man walking. I know Allegri from his modest 3 yr run of success at AC Milan. He likes possession football with short passes in the attack, counterattacking and his teams are NOT going to give away winning positions at the end of games. You could bring him in as a short term stabilizer. He would not be an a-hole like a Conte or a Sarri. He would not sub Kevin Tierney 1 minute after being told by the player to chill, he had it under control (or words to that effect) as Emery did. We are so f**ked now and forever how long before we get it right. Look at Pool after Benitez: Hodgson 1 yr, Dalglish 1 yr, Rodgers 3yrs. Man U is still in the manager’s wilderness with the present incumbent who has the clock ticking as well.
Curious how good is Allergri’s English. Cause Emery’s certainly hurt his ability to communicate with players and fans.
Xhaka loses club captaincy AND removed from captaincy group.
Wow.
He left the club no choice but to sanction him, but I didn’t see this one coming. Expected a hefty fine and a fixed match ban, not this. This is him done at Arsenal, then.
Auba club captain.
rightfully so. the only way he had a chance to retain the captaincy was to own his error (not a fake apology) and to show a desire to lead by demanding to be made available for the game against wolves.
for all of the other stuff folks were saying about understanding and being okay with that non-apology, simply put, that’s not what leaders do. how can you make excuses and be a captain that anyone would respect? so…..nice guy, yep. captain, nope.
There is a difference I think between being okay with it and wanting him to stay captain. Even the die-hard Xhakaists would have struggled to hold much hope of that.
I’m okay with his statement because it allows us to move on, for better or worse. It has been a situation that benefited no-one at Arsenal except those of the ‘Xhaka out at any cost’ brigade. The whole thing is a bona fide sh*tshow, one that probably doesn’t accrue with a better man manager than Emery in charge.
And I’ve changed my mind a bit on how this all shakes down. I thought the club would stick by him at least until the summer. Now I wonder whether Xhaka will push to leave.
Overall I’m kind of sad this sort of thing happened at our club. I may have had misgivings of him as a player but I wouldn’t have wanted this. My hope is that he goes on to somewhere he is less brutally exposed, where he doesn’t suffer the social media abuse from various pondlife, and that we go on and sign the lovechild of Vieira & Santi.
…with that, i don’t like strikers being captain. first, arsenal are green in midfield and need proper leadership in the middle of the park. second, if aubameyang is focused on trying to lead the team, his goal production is going to suffer. it’s far too tough score goals and still try and lead a team.
this is such a poorly assembled team. my main gripe was always that, once santi left (and especially with ramsey leaving), arsenal needed to buy a senior guy to replace cazorla as xhaka wasn’t good enough. it’s like watching a train wreck.
I don’t agree with your view of strikers as captains. Auba and Laca are clearly the leaders of that team. A captain is the designated communicator with the ref, and what else in the modern game? The modern skipper is a senior, respected pro; and not necessarily an organiser like Adams, or a leader/driver like Keane or Vieira. If Wenger had stayed on, Ramsey would have been his captain at the start of last season (till Kosc came back).
The other leader in thsi Arsenal team is Luiz. He gets slated a lot (at times justifiably) but he’s the one Arsenal player I see consistently trying to organise us out there. That he sometimes hasnt heeded his own lessons at times doesn’t change the fact 🙂 Luiz is a darned good player, has won a lot in the game, the players listen to him, and he can see the field. I predict that he’ll get promoted to the group.
And David Silva, one of the best forwards in England, captains City. Raheem Sterling, an impressive young man on and off the field, will one day.
first, let me say that wenger is not the standard bearer when it comes to captain selection. the only time wenger got captaincy right is when he didn’t change it upon arrival. adams was captain arsenal and vieira had a natural ascension. once vieira left, it was a mess that ended with eleven captains. what ship has eleven captains?
under certain circumstances, a striker can be captain. the galacticos had raul as captain but arsenal aren’t the galacticos. they had zidane, beckham, cannavaro, figo, hierro, and casillas; tons of experience and most of these men were captains of their national teams. this is not to mention the likes of roberto carlos and guti. the galacticos didn’t need raul to control the game.
arsenal, however, have a bunch of kids running around the midfield that are talented but don’t know how to control games, win tough games, or hold on to leads. it’s not magic. the team all has to be pulling in the same direction and the captain provides that direction for the team to pull. this is when you need a cazorla or arteta. sure, they were decent on the ball, but their greatest asset is they were experienced campaigners that knew how to control the game.
scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in football. if auba has to try and provide direction, his goals are going to dry up. what auba may be is the best answer from a bunch of awful choices; certainly not ideal. it’s cool for off the field stuff, talking to officials, etc. however, on the field, in tough games, you’ve got to have a leader.
Well it looks like the people that were harassing him and his family and wanted him out of the club are likely to get what they want.
it seems a shame that the internet bully boys who wished for xhaka’s death and his son ‘s serious illness seemed to have won the day.
we should have just taken him out of the firing line for a while.
How have they won the day?
Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn about who is the Captain when our ship is sinking.
Xhaka was done for me when he threw his attackers under the bus for missing chances. That is not what a professional does and that for me was unforgivable. He can take his slow ass, battleship turning, sideways passing, non-defensive mid-field self back to Germany in January.
We have 99 problems and Chaka ain’t one because he should be long gone. I so don’t care about Granit Xhaka as an Arsenal player. Xhaka, be well, but go away now and quickly. Please and thanks.
Guys, David Moyes is available, just putting it out there.
IMO any deliberate foul should be a red card as contrary to the spirit of the game. The only legitimate reason to tackle is to try to win the ball. Any tackle where there in no intent or possibility of winning the ball should be interpreted as fouling for the sake of fouling: e.g. rugby tackles, kicking away a trailing leg. Players know they will get a yellow card for doing what Guendouzi did v. Wolves: a slap on the wrist which essentially makes this unsporting behavior an integral part of the game.
Heckling professional athletes in a professional sports arena is as old as competitive sport itself. Subjecting Xhaka to jeers or criticizing him are not the same thing as making vicious online threats against his family, as Tim pointed out last post. I haven’t heard anyone conflating the attack on Ozil and physical threats against him and his wife, with criticism of his play by gooners who are not into him. In fact, the German has had a tough past year, and has kept his composure in public. He was out representing the club (and Adidas) at a public event in central London a couple of days ago.
So no, Xhaka is the cause of Xhaka’s ouster. Josh got it right. He might have salvaged something from this by reacting differently in the immediate aftermath. His behaviour crossed the line so far that even Emery, who has championed him, had no choice but to drop the hammer. Let’s be clear. Some of us who wouldn’t dream of threatening his family wanted him replaced. But not like this.
Forget all the very public histrionics. The captain of Arsenal FC jumped into his supercar and went home while his teammates were fighting to get 3 vital points. Did Auba and co threaten his family?
Funny we are talking about fouls. His slow play made him a foul machine, but the one thing he was not is cynical. We can say that he is not that type of player. He seemed, in fact, to be a super guy in many ways. Shame that things unfolded in the way that they did.
Ok, he could be cynical, in a sly, tuggy way (think Beckham and Simeone rather than Keane and Haaland), but he is not a vicious foul kind of player.
Good point with regard to Ozil. He’s had a very rough eighteen months or so, with the scapegoating after the World Cup and subsequent fallout with the national side, the attempted assault, the Emery issues leading to complete banishment from the squad, etc. I’m sure he gets torrents of online abuse to boot. In light of all that he has handled himself pretty well publicly.
FFS, it was overturned. And Pochetino won’t stop rumbling about how it never was.
What a retarded world we live in!
..and the final step is to pretend that all of this is normal, just part of the game, “we don’t want to get rid of all contact”….
And for good measure the premier league officials have overturned Song’s Red card
so…wenger to Bayern?
ugh, i hate bayern but if it happens, i’d be happy for the old man.
I came here to post exactly this. I can’t stand Bayern, but if Wenger comes in till the end of the season, I’d cheer for them in the champions league for sure.
I’d love that move for him. German is one of the 5 or so that he speaks fluently. I’d like to see him work with a club that is strong or dominant in its market. And I’d tell him (1) to give us Gnabry back (2) ease up on the 5 -1 wins if we get back into the CL 🙂
I’d love to see the professor raise the champions league trophy. That would be a hell of a way to cap a career.
I hope the time away has been good for Wenger, maybe revitalized him a bit. I hate thinking about his last couple of seasons at Arsenal.
Pepe would be some player if he sometimes used his right leg for something other than motion. Like, you know, whipping in a cross? I like him asa player, but he can look painfully chocolate-legged.
yeah, he’s more one-footed than rosicky.
what do you think about ceballos in the #6 role? i think he’s done okay, considering his age. with that, i’m one of the guys that thought denilson, of similar age, did okay there too, for a young guy.
…and, on cue, ceballos does his hamstring.
He’s ok there. Done alright. I like the defensive workrate he brings to the role. He’s two-footed, and therefore not easy to rob of the ball. Ball security in deep midfield is a precious commodity. But Im coming to the realisation more and more that he’s slow. You need someone there with a good turn of speed and close control with that speed. Like peak Wilshere. My only knock against him is speed.
This Vitoria match is unwatchable, dour, insipid Emeryball at its finest.
this dude can’t hold on to a lead to save his life.
Well that was crap. They were the better team. No creativity or threat in the midfield. Our only shot on target, goal. Outshot again big time by the opposition, who pound for pound, are not as good as we are. Everything is wide, and predictable. Kicking myself for giving up my productivity to watch that. Willock, an exciting box to box player looked totally lost in that game. What was his role?
Another waste of my time. Every Arsenal game is a waste of my time these days, other than offering further evidence that the team is lost.
Ooomph, that was tough to watch. Was Mustafi’s goal our only shot on target?
I find it funny that they can score a goal when we have 8 players in the box, counting the keeper.
Congrats to Arsene Wenger, it sounds like he’s Bayern Munich’s first and only choice for the job.
I think that’s right, Jack (the goal being our only shot on target the entire game).
Static players, backward passes, caution caution caution. Excuse me for a bit while I try to find out where my soul ran off to.
One.
Shot on goal– in the last 150 minutes.
For a goal. Ironically enough by Mustafi.
Who might ought to have been shown a second yellow/red a few minutes earlier.
1st half stats, move along, nothing to see here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gunners/comments/dsj16i/pass_map_from_the_first_half/
Unless you are color blind, your eyes are not deceiving you, no passes in Victoria’s box.
” We’re working with the players to achieve the best possible result. We must be positive to do our best result. The players are working hard to achieve what we want to do in this competition, blah, blah, blah, blah” are quotes that sound like they are what Emery usually say in his defense. Defense of what I say.
EMERY OUT !!!!!!!!!!!!
I travelled to midtown to watch this shite. Wife-of-1-Nil warned me: “You’re taking off productive time in the middle of the day, wasting your time and money at a pub on team going nowhere, playing lousy football to hear you talk (and shout!), you will be upset with yourself and there’ll be no living with you at home tonight.”
Another better angel, my best angel, really, to whom I really need to listen.
Two f&$king hours and $32 in a pub in the middle of the day to watch that. I hate myself more than Unai Emery or even Jose Mourinho right now.
Two f&$king hours and $32 in a pub in the middle of the day to watch that. I hate myself more than Unai Emery or even Jose Mourinho right now.
Lol
At least you got to see AMN have his jewelry removed. That alone was worth the price of admission.
https://twitter.com/DejiPercy/status/1192112884916146176?s=19
1Nil
I was actually going to do the same but thought better of it
Your judgement is better than mine on the day. Cheers. I fear it will get worse before it gets better because I’m not confident this Arsenal board will sack Emery until the situation is worse than it is now. They can say we’re 5th in the league, better than three quarters of the the Premier League and we’ve just about won our group in the Europa League. Not bad on paper, right?