Marmoush looked good for City yesterday.
Spend £100m on Grealish who goes a calendar year without a goal
Spend £60m on Doku who produces sod all
Bring in Savinho on a dodgy £30m deal from sister club Girona - he fails
Throw £70m and £300k a week at Marmoush - 4th time lucky?

The advantage is staggering and it’s cheating. The biggest advantage City have is not that they can buy more players it’s that they don’t have to pay for their mistakes

https://x.com/goonertaik/status/1883462 ... -j6VVZXEoA
What did Oliver say to Arteta to make him stop in his tracks, and consider what he’d heard or whether to go back and confront him.
Of course Arteta clearly could have said something to Oliver but Arteta’s reaction is really interesting. I think it’s got personal for Oliver

https://x.com/mktirb/status/18834602848 ... -j6VVZXEoA

Refs have no choice apparently, forced to apply the letter of the law!

How many more examples in every single game do we need to show to convince the naysayers that Rice and Trossard were 100% singled out for their red cards

What's the difference between Rich and Jumbo jet?





The jet stops whining when it leaves the airport.


Good win and we should be talking about the ability of this team to dig deep. And Havertz? OMG as the kids say. Need a striker........fast.

https://x.com/duc_autumn/status/1840444 ... -j6VVZXEoA

Deliberate foul, studs showing, close to the knee

Red card removed on appeal.

PGMOL have already doubled down on MLS red and have expressed their disappointment at ex players calling it out as the ‘worst decision they’ve seen’

Ah ha here he is….the chief ref apologist, nothing to see hear and ‘it all evens itself out’ go on give us your opinion on that decision? Show me any decision that is similar for a similar challenge? Just once bring something that adds to your argument and some evidence that proves you right and me wrong.
Just criticising and saying ‘you’re wrong’ is worthless.

Funny after all the people on hear deriding that decision it’s my post you respond to?

This is fascinating, it gives a (depressing) great insight into the total ineptitude and cronyism within the PGMOL, plus it also gives a great insight into how crony hacks like Sky's Darren Lewis are just lame agents of PL propaganda.

https://www.skysports.com/football/vide ... l-red-card

The insight into the PGMOL is astonishing, they clearly prefer to criticise those who criticise them, and are in total denial as to how appalling this was from Oliver and England. Sticking to 'serious foul play' because of the height of the MLS challenge is Kafkaesque in its total detachment from reality and the obvious facts.

MLS flicks late, there's no force in it, it largely makes contact with the foot, it's not high, he's in total control of his body weight. It's a yellow for blocking the counter attack, but it ticks zero boxes for endangering safety of the opponent, the fact the PGMOL are denying this is incredible, it is truly Kafkaesque

Then to Sky. A decent journalist would objectively analyse the facts and the arguments, and make a clear judgement that the PGMOL are chatting total nonsense and that this was never ever a yellow card. Darren Lewis is a PGMOL apologist, instead of criticising their absurd comments and opinion, he does this lame duck journalist stuff of explaining their absurd view without subjecting it to any form of analysis or critique. Typical propaganda from Sky.

The club need to come out now, the agenda is clear and the PGMOL are a failed organisation, until they are dismantled refereeing standards will continue to descend down the toilet.

I'd say it will be removed on appeal.

Oliver had 4 options yesterday.
No foul
Foul
Yellow
Red
I think most refs are cowards in their decision making, most of the time they will make decisions to try not to be the headline. An example would be if they gave a heavily disputed corner they will often find a free kick for the defensive team so they ensure their mistake won’t be the headline. Also when there is a melee of players the ref will book one from each side of the two who start it irrespective of severity of bust up

So refs must think what’s the most obvious decision, the one that will generate the least controversy.
Clearly not even giving a foul would have drawn exasperated calls from many but would be an unfortunate footnote as long as Arsenal didn’t score from the play. Just a foul would have also been called out for it not being a yellow. The yellow is forgotten completely. A red has now made it the most controversial decision of the season

The PGMOL is such a failed crony pile of pants that they genuinely think they are right. That's the hardest thing to understand, it is pure 'group think'.

Darren Lewis from the Mirror is saying on sky that he knows that PGMOL are standing by their decision.

Failed organisation. Totally unable to admit they got it wrong. Club must appeal. Also time for diplomacy has passed, the club need to apply significant public pressure on PGMOL to reform.

It was bad decision in my view a yellow but I have only seen it twice. VAR and the ref thought differently and that is what matters. Had we a top striker that game would have been done and dusted for us.

This shows the corruption:

From my short investigation:

April 18, 2023

Al Hilal 2-0 Al Nassr (Saudi Pro League)

Referee: Michael Oliver. Assistants: Stuart Burt, Simon Bennett. VAR: Darren England.

Sep 28, 2023

Sharjah 2 - 3 Al Ain (ADNOC League)

Referee: Michael Oliver. Assistants: Stuart Burt, Daniel Cook. VAR: Darren England.

We fast forward to yesterday and what do we see:

Jan 25, 2025

Wolves 0 - 1 Arsenal (Premier League)

Referee: Michael Oliver. Assistants: Stuart Burt, James Mainwaring. VAR: Darren England.

You'll notice that 3 out of 4 names are exactly the same. The same referee, assistant referee and VAR.

They've officiated in both Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF) is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia and is controlled by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman also owner of Newcastle.

In 2023, the nation's PIF took 75% stakes in four founding members (Al-Ahli, Al-Ittihad, Al-Hilal, and Al-Nassr) in the same year as part of the Saudi Vision 2030 program.

We take a look at their other gig - a game in the ADNOC League.

ADNOC is short for Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the main sponsor of the .

The chairman of ADNOC is Sheikh Mansour, the owner of Manchester City also the current vice president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, as well as the minister of presidential court and member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. He is also the brother of the current president of the UAE.

Not only the owner of City is the chairman of ADNOC, the chairman of City - Khaldoon Al-Mubarak, is also a board member of ADNOC.

I mentioned the current president of UAE, Sheikh Mansour's brother - Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also the owner of Al Ain, the most successful UAE football club and the current holders of the AFC Champions League, one of the two teams in the above mentioned game refereed by the English brigade.

Clearly a conflict of interest basically being on the payroll of the owners of Newcastle - his favorite team and Manchester City - a team that's been dominating the English football in recent years.

Here is an article on it from the NY Times/Athletic by Oliver Kay Oct 3, 2023:

PGMOL is big on optics. There is a reason, for example, Michael Oliver, its leading referee, is not allowed to officiate matches involving Newcastle United, the club he supports — or indeed their fierce rivals Sunderland.

It’s nothing to do with trust or the idea that his allegiance might get in the way of integrity. It’s all to do with optics.

PGMOL decided long ago it would be unfair to put referees in a position where they might be accused of a vested interest. The job is already hard enough — and the accusations of bias or agenda vehement and wild enough — without putting officials in charge of games involving their favourite team.

So why on earth, in an era when two of the Premier League’s pre-eminent clubs are owned by the vice president of the United Arab Emirates and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia respectively, would the PGMOL allow its leading match officials to take lucrative assignments in the UAE Pro League and the Saudi Pro League?

The optics? Not great. Everyone knows that Sheikh Mansour, vice-president and deputy prime minister of the UAE, owns Manchester City. Less well known is that the UAE Football Association has held talks with City Football Group chief executive Ferran Soriano about a “framework of joint cooperation” and that the UAE Pro League’s main sponsor is the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), whose board members include City chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak.

In that context, allowing a group of PGMOL officials to fly to the UAE last week to take charge of a match between Sharjah and Al-Ain — Oliver as referee, Stuart Burt and Cook as assistants, England as VAR — looks inadvisable in the extreme. Not because of doubts about integrity among the officials or the authorities in the UAE, but because having referees on the payroll of another league, with close links to the ownership of Premier League clubs, inevitably brings an extra level of scrutiny that match officials really could do without.

State ownership has brought so many unwanted complications and entanglements into football, but this is one area where the game’s authorities have the opportunity to respond with a polite no — which is exactly what the PGMOL should have done when receiving requests for their referees to work in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Webb has supported the principle of Premier League referees taking overseas assignments, believing they will be better for the experience of working in the UAE, or in Saudi Arabia, as Oliver, Burt, England and Simon Bennett did for a match between Al Nassr and Al Hilal in April.

When Liverpool got their only red card of the season v Fulham at home they dropped 2 points in a game they would have fully expected to win. Had they concentrated more in defence and bought full backs who could actually defend then their two goals would have been enough and won the game.
See - post justification of any performance can be made for anyone but misses the biggest factor in deciding the result of the game - the red card.

And we see the next two teams Arsenal play are Man City and Newcastle, the team Oliver is on the payroll for and the team he supports. It’s would be a huge coincidence that the game before these two is the game Oliver makes a wild outlier decision to send an Arsenal player off.
My view is he wouldn’t have sent an Arsenal player off if there wasn’t an opportunity to, he couldn’t have made it that obvious but as soon as there was an opportunity whether it was conscious or subconscious he was clearly going to get the red card out.

As well as his partisan nature to other teams I think he has a personal problem with Arteta and Arsenal players/team which sees him ref us in a ‘I’ll show you’ way, zero leniency, zero stop and think. He steams in every time

Remember as well as the bigger controversial decisions Oliver has made against us he also gave substitute MLS a yellow for ‘not respect the game’ after Oliver had guessed (he had absolutely no way of knowing for sure) that MLS had passed a message to Raya to go down injured to break up the game.
Oliver also gave Havertz a yellow card for not going off the pitch quickly enough when Havertz had stayed down with a head injury and wanted treatment on the pitch and even had blood coming from the head. Protocol is to treat on the pitch for a head injury

He referees us completely differently.

https://x.com/mktirb/status/18835054160 ... -j6VVZXEoA

Probably only about 10% of what I could pull together. But worth listening to the commentary on these and see how many leave the commentators completely surprised by the decision.

It’s time and time again. And when you ask for all the times Arsenal have got lucky all anyone can come up with is an Ødegaard handball at Anfield at 1-0 when Liverpool equalised 4 minutes later so didn’t have a material effect on the game in anywhere near the same way the decisions against us have

When Gomes was booked for kicking the ball away, Trossard walked over and said ‘he’s done it to me’ to Gomes

They are pagans. They probably worship the devil and sacrifice children. Michael Oliver is the yellow king. Time is a flat circle. History will just keep repeating itself

Arsenal under Arteta

Premier League
Played: 195 games
Red cards: 19 (1 every 10 games)

Europa League / Champions League
Played: 41 games
Red cards: 1 (1 every 41 games)

Great statistic. The Oliver stats are also telling. His red card rate for Arsenal is huge outlier vs City and others.

Arsenal women done over by a poor decision as Little clearly wins ball first:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/vi ... 4e1y3ny9lo

Tottenham

They are not miles off the relegation zone

On a lighter note......... Tottenham..

The sniggering at Postecoglou on this forum is disappointing. He’s doing a great job and gods work. Take a look at yourselves. Enjoying another persons misfortune

… only 5 more days until I become Nostradamus

I'm not sniggering. I quite like Ange as a person. I cannot be sad though when Spurs are hovering close to the relegation zone....

Stop laughing he’s doing a great job

I can't see it but it would be delicious.

To be fair he's got a small squad, decimated with injuries and his top player is not performing. Sounds familiar?. Levy must be one hell of a boss.

That doesn't excuse sticking to the same wide open tactical set-up no matter the opposition or who is missing. There's a squad recruitment issue there and he also persisted with putting an 18 year old midfielder at centre back when he had other options.

Indeed. Shows how hard it is to survive in football without dodgy dealings and an oligarch funding the club.

Tottenham and Arsenal are competing in the inflated market, thanks to likes of City and Chelsea cheating the rules - some big clubs are going to get hit hard in next few years I suspect, doesn't take much, if revenue gets hit by dropping out of CL, then it can be a quick cycle of decline.

There is just no pleasing Spurs fans, 7 months ago they were on their knees praying for their team to lose, now they get to see them lose every week and they’re still not happy!

It’s already happening to some extent. Man U have serious P&S regulation problems so they can’t buy their way out of trouble. They have to do the hard yards as we had to.
Get rid of the time wasters and high earners, even if that mens short term pain for long term gain, and crucially be much smarter in the market. Man U continue to go for obvious signings - who was the last player Man U signed for their first team who wasn’t a household name? Very few.

I’m loving every minute of their downfall and their inability to fix it

Watch out for Villa and Newcastle if they don’t get CL or European football. Both operating with a huge % of wages to turnover - not sustainable for either club.

Villa had to do some dodgy last minute transfer deals with other clubs affected by P&S rules to stay out of trouble, but those deals still don’t solve the problems it’s kicking the can down the road - exactly like Chelsea thinking they’ve out smarted the market by giving out 9 year deals. All their time will come

Yes, agree re Newcastle and Villa.

Chelsea are also sailing close to the wind as they have enormous squad on longer term contracts - they will have to offer bigger wages to keep hold of their better younger players, if they fail to get CL then they are stuffed, as they cannot keep selling their assets to themselves.

Look at Cole Palmer’s stats when playing a big side. Awful. He’s none existent in so many of those big games aside from a few penalties.

Foden goes missing for half a season as well.

Both of these players were praised to the hill by the media - praised in particular ahead of Saka in respect to the national team. To me there is no contest.

Has there ever been a quicker PGMOL statement on a controversial decision than the one they fed to the media less than 18 hours after MLS red card? What are the reasons for such a swift doubling down on the decision?

PGMOL now release a further statement condemning abuse that Michael Oliver has recorded in the aftermath of the decision.

This isn’t an Arsenal fan thing, fans of other teams need to get a reality check if they think they’ve wouldn’t be kicking up a stink and whirling conspiracy theories round if they had the litany of decisions we’ve faced and faced the gas lighting reaction to each one.

When will someone take the ex refs and Howard Webb to task, don’t invite them to defend an individual decision, to twist and hide behind nuance of law and subjectivity - start asking them about precedence, similar decisions, consistency and outlier decisions way out of line with how decisions are typically reffed

PGMOL talk about giving their full support to Michael Oliver in the wake of the abuse he’s received. The best way to support him would have been to train your var team to overrule such obviously bad decisions….and then support him by making him better at his job and send him on a course about subconscious bias.

Darren England was part of the group of officials who were flown out to UAE and Saudi for some guest appearance refereeing for £20k a pop each paid for by Man City’s owners