I must say the bitterness in here is astonishing, no wonder posters have fled in droves

I was only kidding around HS



Liverpool have actually done my team a favour today

Oh well, for the amount of dives Drogba has been award for in the past it seems Mr Karma has come and bit you lot in you big blue arse

Newcastle made andy carroll hand in his transfer request actually...

Talk all you want about Torres, Liverpool have beaten his new team twice this season.  Chelsea played their new £70 odd million pounds worth of signings  Liverpool played neither of theirs and still beat Chelsea in their back yard. Chelsea might be 6 points ahead but they have still a lot tougher fixtures than we have.You have still United to play twice.

Let's talk about diving. How many penalties do you get at Anfailed when Stevie Me throws himself to the ground? Go ahead, count them. But at least we don't blatantly body check people in the box or elbow players in the face like your Danish thug did to Torres today (I've seen players sent off for MUCH less) but hey, we don't abide by The Liverpool Way i.e. cheat on the pitch and bleat about 'history' off it.

All teams cheat.  It's part of the 'game' unfortunately.  To suggest otherwise is ludicrous. 

Regardless of which team won or lost....
 You do not spit at elderly people ....

Poor show.

Is there evidence of this?

Hundreds of eye witnesses. It's not new, they've done it before.

Prom, I don't care, Drogba is the biggest known diver in the premiership. All premiership footballers dives, they all feign injury to gain advantage. Liverpool were the better team today, Reina had one save to make.

Say what you want, nothing will wipe the smile off my face this day

Every team has a diver. Not all teams do it at every home game (hello Gerrard) and I can guarantee if a Chelsea player had elbowed someone in the face today he would have seen red. Johnson couldn't have been more blatant body checking Ivan either and the ref was right beside it. Ivan was about to head the ball into the net. 

There are cheaters and there are Class A cheaters. Liverpool and Barcelona are both in the same category I'm sure you can guess which one.

He's not even close. He's a wuss when he's playing badly, he doesn't dive in the box to cheat the other team out of a goal. That's your speciality.

Prom, you've got Drogba.  Case closed. 

Prom take you beating

No chance. He never dives in the box where he knows he can score. He goes to ground way too easily when he's playing badly and feeling sorry for himself. Rampant gayer yes, cheater, not really, just an embarrassment as much to us as to everyone else.

Im not sure if its worth boasting about but we have the best diver in premier league football...


Mario Balotelli, didnt go down like he had been shot... actually looked like he was tripped, but when the footage was shown. The timing was perfection!


Take a bow son It was like watching Strictly...

Uhuh

All joking aside, why did Torres not play Today?



Ah wait

Just remembered you had Robben an' all.  He was one of the worst of the lot, lol.  Ever.  Or did he leave cause Chelsea took  principled stand against his theatrics?

Just face it, all pro football teams are as bad as each other. 

    It's who gets away with it, and I include my own team in that 

He was a nightmare. Mourinho eventually kicked it out of him but also forced him to track back which he hated. I think that's why he went. He's still a brilliant player and we never really replaced him.

Yeah they all try it on but some are worse than others. I'm not a betting man but if you are put your money every week on Liverpool or Arsenal getting a penalty if they're playing at home. Look up the stats it's a real eye opener. Most of Liverpool's come from the scousers shouting PENALTY every time Stevie Me is in the opposition box.

Just been reading on Online Gooner all the stuff about Dowd, Rosicky and Interpol. It's either a crock of poop or really bad news. Have to wait and see how that developes. Worrying times though.
One of the things to emerge from the stattos on the Arsenal blogs is the anti Arsenal bias shown by Dowd everytime he refs us apparently. I'm no great fan of his even before yesterday but they are saying they have fact/'figures etc that clearly demonstrate that he is up to summat when he refs us!!
I dunno about that but my advice to them if they have anything that can prove bias is to give it to the press/PL etc and get the club to kick off big time about it.

I can picture Wenger already


"I did not see it...

Or

"From where I were stood..."

Some bright spark on Online Gooner suggested that it was actually Rosicky that Cesc was shouting at in the tunnel against Everton.
The alleged ' have you been paid by Everton' quote makes a lot more sense now

Chelsea looked capable of getting a point while Torres was on the pitch – he is the Messiah!

 

Tactically, Ancelotti has been found wanting in both encounters with Liverpool this season. It’s a concern, surely, the amount of games in which Chelsea have failed to deliver any sort of performance in; few chances, little creativity and inept defending.

 

I wonder if Ramires should be given a run in the side – alongside Essien in a central role. Would benching Lampard be too radical a move?

 

Could you imagine the fallout though CS if Carlo left out Lamps and you failed to win a game - bit like us when we leave out Nasri or Cesc.

But with so much focus on Torres now might be the time to at least try something different.

Maybe but then what if you do that and he doesn't produce? He is under immense pressure and scrutiny at the mo, wouldn't it be better to ease him in gradually.
I didn't see your game yesterday but a lot of the consensus seems to be that Torres was not getting the service from midfield and therefore couldn't do much - is that right?
Lamps and Stevie G are reckoned to be two of the best midfielders we have ever produced in England and yet Torres had trouble playing ahead of SG, if he has trouble playing ahead of Lamps then maybe his positioning etc is faulty rather than the service he gets.


I had to nick this from one of the Arsenal forums. We are in meltdown over the refereeing we are getting at the mo.
"In the 25 league games this season we have had 15 referees and we have dropped 25 points so far this season. Of these 25 points 13 of them have been dropped in games being refereed by either Phil Dowd or Mike Dean.

The other 12 points we have dropped have come from the other 13 referees combined. Unlucky or coincidence ? I think Jack Wilshere's weekend tweet suggests the latter"

I dunno what to think tbh. I did think though that we had no chance of winning the Carling Cup as soon as I heard Mike I hate Arsenal Dean had been given it

Torres and Drogba won'r work together the are both used to being loan strikers, then throw Anelka into the mix was only asking for trouble.  3 massive egos on the pitch at one time.

Liverpool set up a strong midfield – a tactic that they employed efficiently – Anelka in particular tried to act as playmaker but nothing through the middle worked, and as ever, Chelsea lacked width. What looked on paper to be a powerful offensive unit was left redundant through a lack of supply. The commentators (Tyler & Smudger) mentioned that Chelsea might as well just launch the ball out of defence and over the midfield – they were getting so little success.

 

Ancelotti failed tactically and will almost certainly face similar problems against both Manchester teams.

 

Do Arsenal get a rough deal from officials – more so than other clubs – or do they just shout louder than other clubs regarding decisions that go against them?

I believe all refereeing decisions even themselves out over the course of a season (except for United who get the rub of the green every.single.time)

Ref CS
Do Arsenal get a rough deal from officials – more so than other clubs – or do they just shout louder than other clubs regarding decisions that go against them?
I can't answer that with any objectivity CS as I'm a Gooner! I do feel that we get a rough deal in all sorts of ways. One of the things that really gets my goat is the amount of cheap cards we pick up. There are stats to prove that we average 1 booking every 4-5 fouls whereas the average is 15 or more. And I don't think our fouls are by and large bad enough to warrant an immediate card - aside from Jack Wilshere's reckless lunge in the West Brom game I think it was which deffo deserved a straight red.
As to the shouting louder part - I actually think it's the opposite. All that stiff upper lip marble halls Chapman bust Arsenal way stuff means that the club never formally complain or make waves behind the scene like Fergie and pals. What we do and say is in the public domain.

If you think you lot get it bad from referees you should try supporting any other club in the country...

You miss the point Disley. The top clubs subscribe to Oscar Wilde's theory, "The only thing worse than been talked about is not being talked about!" They absolutely demand that their product is headlined continuously, whether it's some manufactured story about referees, or a load of twaddle about some 50 megapoond striker who on current form, wouldn't last five minutes in the Rose and Crown Sunday morning team.

Yeah that really did make me laugh RR - what planks!
Disley, I think every club has cause to complain about refereeing. You most certainly should have had a pen against Spurs at the weekend.
I'm firmly in favour of technology to be used re decisions and I don't care if it slows the game down a bit. I am sick to my back teeth with the crap officialdom we have and I don't believe it does even itself out over a season.
Just off the top of my head - Vidic not being sent off against Villa in the final. It was a cast iron red card and Man U going down to ten men so early on would have given Villa a much better chance of winning that game. How does a decision like that even itself out? The final is gone and Villas chance of winning it is gone also

It was a nailed on, stonewall, cast iron penalty... but the ref never gave it! LOL


Maybe the fourth official could be used differently - in front of a monitor, for instance… as opposed to baby sitting the managers…

Poor refereeing? Wait til you see the Manchester derby...





We'll be playing up to the 100th min.

Not if they're 2 nil up you won't meaty!
Finally some sanity http://www.arsenal.com/news/ne...t-of-national-squads. I don't think clubs should release players for their national team unless the federations have insurance in place to pay the clubs if players are injured and face long layoffs.
In the last few seasons we have lost a lot of players because of injuries picked up on internationals. Djourou, van Persie and now Vermaelen have all been sidelined for anywhere up to a whole season because of this.