Originally Posted by GP
in all seriousness the Arsenal legal team should put some time into compiling a dossier of incidents alongside comparable incidents involving other teams and present it to the FA
it's just a joke and is now entirely self-perpetuating as refs will see the stats and think - "ok i need to come down hard on Arsenal in this game..."
It always seems like your own team gets hard done by. In our case why do people think that we are discriminated against? Is it that we are in that kind of anti-goldilocks zone between those teams like Liverpool and Manure who have always held a special place in peoples' affections because of their past, and 'lesser teams' who are supported as underdogs?
Is it because our glory days (and therefore what we are remembered most for) were when we were percieved to be a 'foreign' team?
Is it because we are percieved as being soft moaners who don't like it up them?
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
Don't think we can judge Arteta by last season's poor start. Time for judging him is at the end of this (his first) season, but if we have made definite strides then, I will forgive a rookie manager a poor transition patch...We were mid table last season but all spoke about platforms, transition periods etc. Now it’s the same again this season. Poor start followed by some improvement and we’re now looking ahead to next year.
I can see improvement fundamentally, which is great. However it has to start correlating to the league table, otherwise what’s the point.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
Confirmation bias, basically. Football fans are by nature partisan and it's all quite tribal.
So generally you tend to remember incidents which go against you and feel hard done by and don't remember so well when things go for you.
I don't believe that we are uniquely persecuted by referees, simply because fans of every team seems to think that.
BUT...the stats which have been posted above don't look good, we haven't been getting the rub of the green this year. It could be that referees bias, perceiving us as a "dirty team", which we're not, is a factor.
No, I'll tell you what it is. In the mid-2000s and onward, teams would go out to kick us. Allardyce sides, Pulis sides, and refs would let them.
Arsene Wenger has the AUDACITY to complain about the refereeing. And it's been downhill since then.
NOTE: The location of this post has been moved and the thread title (which was previously Wenger is Leaving) has been manipulated by a notorious pro-Wenger moderator. What was previously a message that contained no profanity and made a comment on a real life event has now been manipulated by a deliberately provocative title. An old and crude propaganda and censorship technique.
but smaller clubs believe there is a big club bias as well. the red cards isnt because of dirty fouls. its silly mistakes that has caused the red card. we arent a dirty team, you can assess just based on number of yellows. a study needs to be done to collate what the yellows have been for as compared to other teams, grade the type of tackle etc.
i dont think there is an anti arsenal movement with refs.
anyway on to the next game, i dont think this will have a big effect on confidence because of the nature of the team, for once we werent rubbish and lost. so the team is playing better. perhaps it might be worth having Pepe through the middle as he seems to found some goalscoring boots
as you know i'm no conspiracy theorist, but there is without doubt a genuine bias against Arsenal - sa i said above it's now a self-perpetuing situation and the club should make a proper effort to stop it as it's costing us several points per season
I’ve never been one to moan and groan about refereeing because I prefer to look at what the team can and should be doing to negate any poor standard of officiating, however there’s no doubt we’ve been on the end of some woeful decisions and it does make you think about how Arsenal are perceived.
Of course fans of other clubs would probably tell you the same and how they feel their club has been wronged.
The truth is probably a fairly a simple one and that is the standard of refereeing is just plain awful and has been for a long time.
Confirmation bias certainly plays a big part in how we perceive refereeing decisions for and against us. However, just because confirmation bias runs rife throughout the football fan community, it doesn't mean there isn't a problem.
The views expressed here by many and which I hold as well, are not baseless. There is a statistically significant sample over a material timeframe that supports our view that something is not right. I mean when you look at the data - it isn't even close. We are a complete outlier, even compared to the recipients of the second most amount of cards and sendings off.
And that is the case by both percentage and volume. That isn't even taking into account the eye test - what stares us in the face every 90 minutes. I'm not saying the Club should go on a public rant about this, but at the very least, they should robustly seek an explanation and if the response isn't substantive, then go public about it.
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