It wasn't a penalty Hazard conned the ref but Chelsea missed some absolute sitters so I don't really feel cheated, actually I'm not sure anybody gives a *%^@ anymore

I would say soft but correct. Bellerin makes no contact with the ball, and enough contact with Hazards heel to justify the decision. Ridiculous to call it farcical. The one against WBA was farcical, but not this one.

The game is alien to me these days. It seems contact now justifies a penalty kick. 5 or 6 years ago that was a dive, plain and simple. I couldn't understand the one Everton got against Liverpool a few weeks ago and this was worse. It has effectively got to the stage where you cannot touch a player in the box.

What annoys me is how he always plays the persecution card (or in other words it's always someone else's fault) whilst refusing to acknowledge that the vast majority of our poor performances/results over the last decade has been a direct result of his own inability to address the alarming and very obvious deficiences in his own teams.

Went to the match tonight. Gives a totally different perspective than on tv.
Both teams very evenly matched, the clear difference being Chelsea have a well drilled back line who make the opposition play well for their chances. Our defence is a total shambles that gifts chances left right and centre.
The number of times a simple lofted ball beat our entire back 5 was frightening. It is also noticeable how arsenal simply aren’t switched on at any opposition restart in play, so many short corners, easy ‘outs’ from goal kicks. One free kick saw a man free down the left from the moment the free kick was given and no one picked him up, it lead to a dangerous cross. Just take the same players and someone to tell them what to do without the ball and we improve by 10-15 points each season.
It seems the penalty was a soft one. My gripe is more that we never seem to get away with anything in our own box, every foul is a pen, even 50/50 ones are given. At the other end we don’t seem to get the 50/50s. Even if all decisions for and against are correct you would expect the statistical anomalies of the odd lucky decision for you. I can think of the one v West Brom at Home but so many other pens given or not.
Draw was a fair result. The game pretty much summed up this current arsenal team in a nutshell.
Injuries to big players for a big game.
Dominate but fail to score
Gift guilt edged opportunities when on top
Score but throw away the lead immediately......to a penalty
Confidence drained concede again
Late rally and goal to install just enough hope going forward
And still time to nearly gift the opposition a winner!

Like all the other managers do.

Interesting - Bein sports saying both Hazard and AMN should have had pens, G Neville saying neither were....I'm more in agreement with the ref than the commentators...that must be a first...

We are likely to finish 6th. So unless a replacement for Wenger was a total disaster, we are no better off in retaining him for another two years. Football managers come and go at other clubs all the time. We are the screaming example of a club that would benefit from a new manager while having so much else going for us.

Ok, but following from that... it is understandable that Wenger is feeling outraged that we have been denied four points (possibly) in a few days by farcical (WBA) and soft (Chelsea) penalty calls. Especially, as we rarely seem to get these in our favour.

Not 100% of the time , other managers come out from time time admitting their teams weren't good enough. Mourinho, pep, sralex.

Wenger spins it 95% percent of the time

Maitland-Niles has a decent game, albeit he was beaten 1v1 for the cross for 2-1. Give him a game in his natural position.
Wilshere deserves a new contract. He wants to stay, we can’t throw away a player like that for £0, particularly with the position we’re in.

Look at the squad and we are going to need an overhaul in every position considering those who are ageing, leaving and not good enough
2 new gk needed
Perhaps 3 CB and a RB required
At least 2 in central mid
And at least 2/3 in attack

Wenger has criticised the team a fair few times recently.

Why didn’t Čech just stand up and stay in the middle for the penalty. Every man and his dog knows how hazard takes his pens, he is slow, calm and waits for the gk to move before placing a pen with no pace. Stand up and force him to panic, with no pace on the shot you can afford to dive late.
That said Čech did save us with a number of good saves today, a couple of 1 on 1s and a fantastic double save at the start of the second half

The next 4 in the league are must wins. We probably will win all 4 before losing to spurs and city in the next two after that

Quite simply nothing has changed this season at all. Who we won, lose draw against and even how we score and concede is all exactly the same

Most other football clubs have at least one person running the show who knows a damn thing about football....now we actually have the beginnings of a brain trust, I'm a lot more optimistic about any future hire.

Conte's post match interview is great...any difficult question he says he didn't see it, pretends not to understand the question etc...straight out of the early years Wenger playbook!

If John Lennon had been shot by Morata, he'd probably still be alive.

I said earlier to expect such types of signing, and here it is. Very Arsenal. I guess pretty much everyone in this forum would have expected the same.

http://news.arseblog.com/2018/01/boss-c ... ws+site%29

No it was a penalty. The ref pointed to the spot and they scored. Maybe you think it should not have been awarded but if Wenger and you have VAR in the future it will be a penalty then as well. Because I expect with VAR, once awarded there was no reason to overturn it. There was contact. You and Wenger might be on the minority on this view.

I cannot let Wengers press conference pass without comment.

Farcical is a term that can be used in conjunction with Arsenal but in relation to the overall management of the team not referee decisions. If I put my key concerns.
Contracts expiring over the next 18 months of many key positions. Forget the next 6 months - look further ahead and start to worry.
Following from that of course is that Wenger will buy or promote players of his ilk. We will be stuck with more players being paid a *%^@ load of cash who will not want to move because they will never be paid that much again by even a chinese club. The USSR socialist experiment failed. it also failed at our club.
A defense that needs improvement in quality and training about their roles.
A failure to jettison the failures.
A failure to properly succession plan.
Wenger continually shifting blame away from the players. Players never taking responsibility.
Lack of strong leaders. He likes peace and tranquility and achieves it with finding and promoting placid players.

January 4 - 23 points behind the leading club in the EPL. Farcical

Going to cost a lot of extra cash to get his name put on the back of a jersey.

There is a cheaper option, simply put "The One". Indication of Wenger's well researched value buy.

23 points ????
Did you miss a punctuation mark somewhere? Did you mean be 2 - 3 points, because it is only January

The penalty or non penalty imo.

Would it have been given against Spurs or Man City. No chance in hell.

Considering the way he allowed the game to flow, credit to him, he would not have given a free kick if it had happened outside the area. No way.

It was not a penalty as Hazard was not in control of the ball.

But its hardly surprising that Wenger was upset. Two penalties like that in a row. Even Job would have been a bit irked.

Konstantinos Mavropanos



Arsenal have signed Greek defender Konstantinos Mavropanos from PAS Giannina for a £1.9m initial fee.
He joins the youth ranks, taking Arsenal's net spend to £22.5m so far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantinos_Mavropanos

I only wish I had. I know people will come on and say that Man C is having an exceptional season etc etc. Great and comparisons with how Man U etc is doing and how far they are also behind do not cut the mustard. If we were running a the same level as the second placed team at least I could justify our position but our 1st team do not play cup games so fatigue is no excuse while all the other squads have played CL. We are 5 behind 4th place trophy at the moment. There has been no EPL challenge.

Unless it's a corner when you are allowed to wrestle them and try and swap shirts as you see fit.

It was a penalty. It wasn't just contact, he kicks Hazard's foot with enough force to potentially interfere with his play. Some refs might not have given it but that doesn't make it farcical. Saying "oh Wenger's entitled to feel disappointed" is ridiculous in my view. He's entitled to but he's also a senior well rewarded professional who should be able to have enough perspective to know when it is appropriate to complain in such a way. We drill it into kids for God's sake. And not all managers complain in the way Wenger does - that simply is not true. Mourinho does for sure but many adopt a more circumspect approach and would probably have said the truth in that situation: that it stung after WBA but we have to suck it up.

Also he really needs to take that jumper to the dry cleaners.

Also not a single observer from the mainstream press agrees with Wenger, there is almost universal consensus that the ref got this one right just as there was almost universal consensus that the WBA penalty was wrong. So there is no "conspiracy" and Wenger makes himself look like the special-pleading idiot that he is and opens himself up for comments about Wilshere's (and possibly ASM's) simulation but - more tellingly - the fact that he scorns defence in a ridiculous and infantile pose that he is all about the "exciting"part of the game.

His press conferences almost hurt they are so childish and whiny.

“We have to account in our preparation for that’s what we have to face. You see good football, unfortunately, you see as well bad decisions. Games are spoiled by factors you cannot determine. It’s all opinions. But when your opinions go the same way – what is repeated is not coincidence.” Asked what he meant by saying that he “knew that as well before”, Wenger said: “I mean nothing. You are always more intelligent than everybody. So you can guess what happens.”

Also if you look at the above you see a man who is even less comfortable with words than with the concept of organised defending. Wenger is allegedly good at languages and yet it is a kind of angry gibberish with almost no coherent meaning let alone syntax. "It's all opinions, But when your opinions go the same way - what is repeated is not coincidence" is just the resentful noise of a graceless loser. And of course he ends by attacking the questioner with his familiar childish truculence. "You are always more intelligent" would disappoint me from a twelve year old. I am still astounded when people trot out the idea that this guy is smart or somehow distinct from other managers in his style.

In what way is this better than or different from Mourinho?

Having watched it again this morning I have changed my mind. There is no way the amount of contact from Bellerin on the sole of Hazard's foot was sufficient to bring Hazard down in the manner the Belgian collapsed to the ground, whilst holding another part of his body, yelling in agony. As football is a contact sport that should never have been given - as Bellerin's contact was not enough to have felled the player w/o the exaggerated dive.

Calls for a mural.

Nah, a referendum on cheating foreigners.

Arseblog.

Wenger is becoming more and more of a joke. Poor guy is sinking deeper and deeper into his own pit of sH**. I said earlier, he is painting himself into a corner of the corner he painted himself into. He must be a great artist to even paint himself, into another corner, of the corner of the corner. He is basically balancing on one toe right now. Picture that

Interesting point i've seen mentioned on some websites - in the games against man u, chelsea, spurs and liverpool at home we have had ups and downs but there was an intensity to our play. Where was that intensity against west ham, west brom, southampton etc. Can the manager only extract this from his players for the big games - or are the players only rousing themselves for the big games?

Either way it is a poor showing, and it isn't working as we've hardly won any of the big games - as always

My argument does not rest on contact though. My argument is whether it was a foul which I think it was (Bellerin kicks an opponent - whether that was intentional or not is irrelevant because the force only has to be deemed reckless or excessive) and whether it was in the penalty area which it definitely was. I don't care which part of his body Hazard clutched - totally irrelevant to anything (although having watched it again, a jarring kick forcing pressure up your leg could lead you to clutch a part other than the point at which contact was made so think this argument is dubious anyway)

Bellerin kicked the underside of an attacking player's foot instead of the ball in the penalty area. There is nothing "farcical" about a penalty decision in such circumstances and, with the benefit of repeated replays, a senior ex referee and pretty much all the pundits and commentators agree. There is no point arguing anti-Arsenal media bias (utter rubbish anyway in my opinion) as the same consensus applied in the opposite direction to the West Brom penalty.

They were not two penalties "like that". They were completely different.

Not sure what this debate is about. It's not a penalty, he threw himself on the floor and conned the ref. I thought that immediately and didn't need a replay to see it.

Wenger has been making a wider point about the standard of refereeing which of course is ignored as people go to town on Wenger having a whinge (and yes I accept he likes one and always has done).

The last few games I have watched have all had very poor or questionable decisions so Wenger clearly has a point on this. Penalties against Arsenal in the last 2 games, a penalty for Palace against Man City awarded fro ma dive; a blatant offside goal for Spurs against Swansea. I'm sure there were many more over the Christmas period that I haven't seen.

For me, Bellerin is not a penalty for the reasons given earlier. WBA was not a penalty either so I can understand Wenger's ire at the moment. Of course this doesn't excuse Arsenal's poor defending or poor performances away from home this season but on the last two games we have clearly been robbed by "generous" refereeing.

Top four teams: three points from a possible eighteen so far I think. It is interesting though that in the bigger games we see flashes of what this team might be especially if we weren't run by a bunch of con-artists and their enabler-in-chief who will now hopefully get an ASBO preventing him from going within a mile of the stadium.