They just showed the replay a couple more times, and I have to say it's a shocking decision rather than just a very poor one. Clear as day, Romero pulls Cucurella down by the hair. Should be a red card and a free kick, instead Tottenham gets another corner and steal two points from Chelsea. I don't mind Chelsea being robbed of points but VAR has to do better than that. Could be us next time.

Agree totally

Also souness was saying the ref let things go improved the game! Feel dirty saying this but if I was a chelsea fan I’d feel cheated,

At the very least its a foul Haz and should have been a free kick and not another corner. I really do not understand the logic in not giving a foul.

All I can say is these VAR guys are just clueless.

I also thought Richarlison was in an offside position and in the line of the keepers sight for the first Tottenham goal.

EDIT:

Apparently VAR cannot step in and give a foul, its either a red or not so I was wrong. Still think the ref, who was looking right at it, should have spotted a foul.

Totally cheated. A foul at the very least and thus a free kick and not another corner.

I am am Tuchel I am calling it like it is in the press conference, who cares about the fine.

I am saying that both the referee and the VAR guy are incompetent and unfit to officiate. The decisions they got wrong today were shocking and inexcusable.

Violent conduct isn't it?

Spurs really do get away with a lot, which rankles all the more when you see how harshly we are treated.

Chelsea fans hate Anthony Taylor the ref today, expect a lot of grief for him from them

Imagine if xhaka had done that. An unquestionable Instant red.

Has souness been on the lagers again. Keeps referring to it being a man’s game with Karen Carney sat next to him. They corrected him first time then left it.

Agree with tuchel on the fouls. It’s ridiculous and he must be livid inside.

Chelsea outplayed them but only got a point. Funny ol' game.

Given what Xhaka has been deemed guilty of then pulling someone’s hair like that must be a red.

I can understand why Chelsea are aggrieved.

https://twitter.com/eurofootcom/status/ ... mFYgk195SA

Romero is a nice guy! I can’t stand these sorts of players, bad winners are far worse than bad losers. Rubbing it in someone’s face moments after he himself should have been sent off for the hair pull.

So many dislikable characters in spurs team, the fact they are allowed to get away with it so often makes it worse

It's hard to look past Jesus for man of the match against Leicester, but I really like what I've seen from Martinelli all throughout pre-season and the opening two fixtures. His usual energetic style is the same, but he looks like he has refined his game to where he makes better decisions with the ball, and executes with more quality. He also looks like he's added some muscles, bossing strong players like Fofana around in challenges. I'm expecting a big season from him, the aim should be around 10-15 goals at least. Saka should be able to contribute the same, and with Jesus playing like he's been doing so far he can honestly hit 20 league goals. We know Smith-Rowe and Ødegaard can score too, and Xhaka looks like he has goals in him in his new role.

So much of last season we complained about how much of our attacking game relied on Saka playing a blinder, but he's had two rather quiet games now and we've still created loads of chances. It's a big change in just a year to now we're looking like we have goal threats all over the team.

Watching the new episodes of All Out Arsenal as I've been away all weekend, and seeing the defeat against Man City on new year's day was just as heartbreaking as seeing it live. We were on a good run before that, but that was the game that really showed how far we had come since the horrible start to the season. To up against a team of that quality and not only hang on, but to actually be the better team for the first hour is something very few teams do. Most of the time when City drop points it's teams that sit back and manage to not concede, maybe snatch a goal from a set-piece or a defensive error, but we actually went toe to toe with them, and deserved our lead. There was a City fan on AFTV after the game who said he hadn't seen his team being pressed like that in a long time. And this season we're even better. I would love to get a league win against them this year, just to give the players the belief that they can do it.

Nuno Tavares has scored again for Marseille tonight

I’m finding it absolutely impossible to feel any sympathy for Chelsea at all. This is a club whose trophies since the early nineties were funded by a Russian oligarch and from that so is the club’s current elevated standing in the game.

While I agree it could be us next time, this time it was the turn of Chelsea. It’s something that can happen to any and every club. At the end of the day, the incident lead to two of Arsenal’s main challengers for a top four place dropping a couple of points each instead of Chelsea not dropping any and Tottenham dropping three. I still believe a draw today was the best result for us and whether or not it happened via a bad refereeing decision, I don’t care.

If Chelsea feel cheated, I’m really not bothered. Just like their fans won’t be if it happens to Arsenal.

Souness is getting it online for saying ‘it’s a man’s game’ and that’s what I like ‘men going at it’ when talking about the fracases in the Chelsea v spurs game.
It’s an old phrase and an unfortunate choice of words given the lift the women’s game has had this summer but people need to realise that’s all it is - clearly Souness is not implying women can’t or shouldn’t play football.
I’m sure Souness would be equally happy if there were a few flare ups in the womens game. Someone will be waiting to jump on whoever says it was just ‘handbags’ declaring that sexist.
The ravenous vitriol people seem to have online to take offence on behalf of other people and demand apologies, cancelling etc. it’s tiresome

And Balogun scored another for Reims

That rule is very silly. Mindbogglingly so. When you review a decision your should advise the ref to give the correct decision, not just whether it was a red.

The parallel is with Trump's search warrant. They go in looking for X, but if they look in the safe and find Y, that is fair game.

The language police. They can *%^@ off as far as I'm concerned.

Salutations Decaf ... yeah I realise a know nothing like myself would have us relegated in half a season .

I was just making a choice between the two Leicester men supposedly on offer .

Thinking on I was wondering who do you drop to accommodate either ....? after all Smith Rowe and Vieira are still to come back

Hair pulling isn't new. The December 2018 match at OT, which ended in a 2-2 draw, involved Fellaini pulling Guendouzi's hair as he was accelerating away from him and pulled Guendouzi down. This was all in front ref Andre Marriner at the time. Mariner only gave a free kick and no further action was taken towards Fellaini. Not even a caution.

Two weeks ago during the pre season match between Real Betis-Marseille, Guendouzi had his hair pulled by Mexico captain, Andres Guardado. No punishment given. So nothing new in it.

Not saying it doesn't matter, but apparently some refs don't see it as punishable.

Marrying one of the Walmart heirs was a good bit of business acumen . Winning the Super Bowl this year would have topped up the coffers .

Maybe he was waiting to get his US sporting affairs sorted before concentrating on Arsenal .

He paid $ 550 million to move the Rams from St Louis to Los Angeles then he [ and the NRL ] paid $ 790 million in compensation to St Louis .

He then he forked out $ 5.5 BILLION for a new 70,000 seater stadium . Once he got all that lot in place he thinks now let's sort the Premier League

I really don’t know if it’s the case but I have read he made his fortune independently from marrying Ann.

While the pundits thought it was violent play, MOTD2 tonight said there was no mention of hair pulling when violent play is defined in the regulations. Sounds like the rules of the game may need to be reworded.

I may be bothered if that point for spurs gets them some advantage over us at the end of the season.

Isn’t it just as likely 2 extra points would give Chelsea some advantage over us? I look at it mathematically. A draw means they dropped 2 points each, so a total of 4 for the clubs who may well be our closest challengers for a top four spot. A win for either club means 3 points would have dropped between them. If the goal had been disallowed, specifically Tottenham would have dropped 3 and Chelsea would have dropped zero or 0.

At this stage of the season when it’s too early to say who will be stronger between them, I would rather our potentially closest challengers drop 4 points in a single game (2+2) than 3 (3+0).

But that fail to take into account the hate factor. I hate Spurs more and they benefited from the dodgy decision.

Hate is a side issue that clouds judgement. I prefer to consider what is apparently best for Arsenal. At this early stage of the season when we don’t know what will happen for sure, it looks better for our potentially biggest challengers to drop four points between them than three.

Sure, if Chelsea end up mid-table what would have been the best result for Arsenal yesterday may change. But that looks extremely unlikely to me.

So far, it appears the 3 big London clubs will battle it out for 3rd to 5th. We may see a change in management on the red side of Manchester before the season is out. Man Utd will play well against us. I feel it. I am worried about that one. A draw will feel like a loss.

https://youtu.be/a91mrDs6dSE
As pointed out on MOTD this hair pull by Hutu on Fellaini resulted in post match video review and a 3 match ban for Huth for violent conduct. So given plenty of time the PGMOL concluded pulling someone’s hair violently enough to throw their neck back is a red card offence….and then decide a few years later it isn’t.

Looking ahead at our coming fixtures, I wonder when the first banana skin of the season will come. When the team is playing well, it's always difficult to imagine it will suddenly stop, but at some point it will. Our next six league games look like games we should be able to win, but it's extremely unlikely that we start the season with 8 straight wins - not even Man City did that the season they got 100 points.

Bournemouth might actually be a tricky fixture. I wouldn't be surprised to see them relegated in the end, but facing these newly promoted teams early on can be difficult. They started with a good win against Villa, and their loss against City is pretty easy to write off. They're still on that early season buzz, and their fans will be well up for it.

They talked about that on MOTD2 last night.

I suppose it's not in the same category as shirt pulling. Even an elbow or hand push to the face many times is not considered by some even to warrant a yellow card, let alone a red. Then again, as seen often, depends on which club is doing the violation.

I also think that Chelsea player deserves a booking for having a hair style like that. He’s a professional footballer not some guitarist from a 1970s hard rock band.

Not that it will do any good necessarily. Players appeared to have their own agenda in the Brentford match. Ten Hag needs more than severe training exercises. Needs an overhaul of their mentality, among other things.

Like you I expect Bournemouth to be relegated but it will be a difficult fixture. After that our next away games are Manchester United and Brentford. We may have better players than all of them, but to win all three will be extraordinary.

Don’t write off forthcoming home games as guaranteed wins either. Football isn’t that predictable. Otherwise everyone would make fortunes from betting on the results of games.

Apparently Souness said that Aubameyang 'struggled' in the premier league.

His goal record was phenomenal, golden boot once, runner up golden boot once, settled straight away with 10 goals in his first half season. The last few months weren't good but his focus was gone - he certainly didn't struggle.

I don't mind Souness as a pundit but he has too much of a tendency to judge players football ability based solely on his views on their attitude and whether Souness thinks they're a 'real man' who would shout and scream and throw a punch at a team mate in the dressing room and die for the cause. He often strikes me as one of those 'in my day' pundits

He may make me eat my words if Chelsea buy him, but I think Aubameyang would be a very high risk signing and I would almost expect him to flop.

Us Arsenal fans know him better than most - on his day he's a wonderful goalscorer, but apart from scoring he doesn't really do much else. He doesn't press well, he's not a hard worker, his hold up play and ability to link up with teammates is quite frankly very poor. He's a finisher and that's it, and sometimes that's fine, I just don't see him working under Tuchel who demands a lot more from his strikers as we've seen with the failure of Lukaku, Werner etc.