Morning all.
Arsenal did their job well last night. A mix and match team from start to end but with a few surprises thrown in. Not as far as personnel goes but how they played. Zinchenko had an excellent game in midfield and Sterling played really well too ending with two assists. He should have scored when Zinchenko fed a great ball through the middle for him to run onto but instead, fired straight at the keeper. For all the good he did, his challenge at the end of the game was stupid and reckless and I was surprised when the referee didn’t pull a red card out of his pocket rather than the yellow he showed him, especially having seen both Kiwior and Rice pick up bookings for their soft “tackles”.
A wonderful strike from Zinchenko and a rare header from Rice helped cement our journey into the quarterfinals of the Champions League where we’ll play Real Madrid. I felt sorry for Atletico when Julian Alvarez had his penalty disallowed after slipping and allegedly touching the ball twice, especially as replays showed, the ‘double touch’ was not definite. Apparently it was Courtois who raised the issue with the referee who then called upon VAR to check. Honours were even when Real missed a spot kick of their own but Llorente then struck his against the woodwork leaving Rudiger to tuck his home for the victory.
As far as style of football goes, it’s probably better for Arsenal to be facing Real Madrid than Atletico because the latter would be so so hard to break down. We struggle against a low block in the league so I’m pretty sure we’d find things even more difficult against a Simeone team who are masters at defending. They’re like the factor 100 in a sun block world.
The first leg of the Real Madrid tie is on the Tuesday 8th April at The Emirates.
When one considers our domestic struggles this season, I think the players have done really well to reach this stage of the competition. It’s not like every fixture in the group stage was easy and PSV, whilst not the strongest of opposition, still had to be beaten with the same group of players who have been part of our domestic struggle. To defeat a fellow Champions League club 7-1 on their own pitch is something to be really proud of I think and such a scoreline allowed Mikel Arteta to rest a few players last night. Not only resting players is good but seeing both Sterling and Zinchenko come into the team and play really well can only be positive. Sterling needed a confidence boost so perhaps last night will prove to be it. I think we all know the quality of Zinchenko but he’s just not good as a left back. Yesterday we saw some of the best of him from further up the pitch.
I cant end without a word on Gabriel. What a player he is and what a challenge that was! Just brilliant…
Catch up in the comments..
Afternoon rico, not often a home draw feels very satisfactory, but it did this time. I watched the extra time of Madrid game, felt Atletico very hard done by.
comment worked, thought be a problem as no replies above 🙂
There a are a couple of my comments missing too.
Afternoon Andrew, Cicero.
I’m not aware of any comments issues…
I watched the end of the Madrid match too . Reckon that Arteta and Simeone might have been an interesting sideshow but Ancelloti it is . Can only see it 50 /50 we will need a cushion to go there but I have faith in our defence to defend a lead but 2 would be nice .
It would be like watching a game of chess I reckon…
Just hope we have no more injuries to come an Saka is back by the 8th April.
I’d give Sterling four out of ten. Two assists, one blinding miss, for the last ten paces of his run it looked like he was running through treacle and his shot was decidedly weak and a stupid late booking. I can’t see that earning him anything other than his taxi fare back to Stamford Bridge.
He’ll be gone soon and you’ll miss him. 😜
I can’t disagree that Sterling’s assists were really good, I did miss most of the first half so can’t comment on his other first half exploits.
I did think his second half performance was poor all round and I too expected a red card for that tackle. Very Norman Hunteresque.
I think last night’s game was the first football match that I’ve watched that did not have a single Var moment. Amazing!
They ended in a goal Berg, that’ll do for me. lol
I don’t expect to see him playing any time soon unless we’re several goals to the good with five minutes to go..
I’m surprised they didn’t get involved with the Sterling challenge.
Different strokes for different folks , from the European football that I have watched it seems that the referee actually runs the game and does not rely on VAR to re run everything . In the Madrid derby they only got involved because Courtois complained . |Had he not done so it would have gone through unchecked.
Their use of VAR seems less provocative whereas here the PGMOL seem to want to study the minutiae of everything . It makes them all important which is what they seem to think they are .
I agree, it’s same old, same old, PL refs etc make games about themselves. Really good officials though, go unnoticed..
Miles Lewis-Skelly gets his first senior call up for England.
Thankfully, there has been no call up for Ben White.
Or Bukayo Saka 😂
As soon as he’s match fit though Rico.
For sure Cicero.
Not sure but is this the last international break of the season?
I sincerely hope so Rico. 😉
Me too Cicero…
However Nwaneri has gone with Lee Carsley with the under 21’s against France and Portugal , just after being subbed for us to conserve him . He will no doubt get minutes hopefully not too many .
France and Portugal, he would have been better off with the seniors!
A new low
VAR strikes again
Nick Hornby
On Wednesday night, VAR disallowed a goal – a penalty, anyway, during a penalty shoot-out – for an offence that was literally invisible to the naked eye. Nobody in the stadium saw it. The referee didn’t see it. The TV commentators didn’t see it without the benefit of a replay, at which point it became clear to them, if to nobody else. The Real Madrid players who stood to benefit didn’t appeal. After the game Diego Simeone, the Atletico manager, asked the journalists at the post-match press conference to raise their hands if they had spotted it. No hands went up. Only the VAR noticed.
Julian Alvarez, the penalty taker, slipped as he was kicking the ball, and in the process was adjudged to have kicked the ball with both feet at the same time. He did not do this deliberately, obviously, and slipping whilst taking a penalty does not confer an advantage on the penalty taker, or it didn’t on this occasion. The laws do not allow for the kick to be retaken, as they do for other infringements during penalties; it just does’t count.
This being a hot-ticket overpriced Champions League game, nobody in charge had the courtesy to inform the crowd. On the screens in the stadium, a green tick was simply changed to a red cross. More fool you if you happened not to notice. Real Madrid missed one penalty, but Atletico missed two, including Alvarez’s effort, so they went out of the competition, despite winning the game on the night.
This stinks. VAR didn’t have to get involved in this moment. They chose to. If they had decided to ignore it, nobody would ever have mentioned it again. Is that why we have it? So that some jobsworth watching a monitor can insert himself into the narrative of the game, even though nobody asked him to, or wanted him to?
Why it’s so often Real Madrid who seem to benefit from these moments is beyond the purview of this Substack, but I have my suspicions, and I will not report any of you who wish to air yours in the comments. Remember the linesman’s flag going up super-quick when Bayern Munich had a chance against Real in the closing seconds of the semi-final last season, despite all official instructions telling him to keep it down in exactly those situations? And the referee blowing his whistle to stop play, even though he didn’t have to? That referee was Szymon Marciniak. Mr Marciniak happened to be the ref in charge of Wednesday night’s penalty shoot-out, as well as the ref who erroneously awarded PSG a decisive penalty against Newcastle last season. Are we at least allowed to say that he’s useless?
I can only re-iterate: VAR is having a profound effect on the excitement of a game, especially for supporters inside a stadium. We are quickly learning not to celebrate goals, knowing that there is a bureaucratic process that has to be endured before we are told whether our team has actually scored or not. In Eindhoven, fans had to wait for around four minutes to learn whether the third Arsenal goal was going to stand or not; during the delay, the refereeing expert on TV helpfully explained that the decision, when it came, would be “purely subjective” – so much for the scientific precision of technology. A couple of weeks prior to that, Bournemouth fans had to wait eight minutes, a new English record, to hear whether their goal against Wolves was good. (It wasn’t, but luckily most of them had lost the will to live by that point.)
Ask any football fan and they will all tell you the same thing: we would rather live with bad decisions in the moment than wait eight minutes for what still might be a bad (or purely subjective) one. What we are heading towards are stadiums full of tourists, gaping at the famous players as though they were exotic fish; and then, when the tourists realise that going to a Premier League match is as enthralling, as noisy and as passionate as a trip to an aquarium, they will stop coming too…
My question is when did referees change their opinion based on what a player says?
The Atletico penalty wouldn’t have gone to VAR if the referee stuck who his guns but he changed his mind after the Coutois (spelling) told him Alvarez had touched the ball twice.
New post up.