When Granit Xhaka deliberately tripped Modou Barrow on the halfway line, most people thought it would be the yellow card it merited.
However, referee Jon Moss pulled out his red card and sent the Swiss international off, putting us in a rather vexatious position for the final 25 minutes.
The Gunners held on to put an end to the Swansea hoodoo, winning 3-2 in the end, and Arsene Wenger pulled out another fantastic quote when asked about it after the game.
“It looked harsh to me,” he said, “ut it was a deliberate foul. It looked a dark yellow – and the referee went for a bright red!”
The Arsenal manager backed his player to learn from it though, saying, “I think intelligence means you don’t make the same mistake twice, and I hope he learns from that.”
Wenger says he’s not going to appeal, so the £35m man will miss a single game – sitting out next weekend’s Premier League clash with Middlesbrough.
Im glad we have our coq back
Time to pull out le Coq
Just watched MOTD, Wenger says “I thought I was a dark yellow, but it became an ABSOLUTE red”
Not bright red. If your going to right a separate article for his awesome quote get it right. ;p
P.s he just clipped his heel it was never a yellow in a million years. If it was Busquets would never play a game for Barca ever again
Depends on where you got your quote from. Since they do the same interview multiple times
https://mobile.twitter.com/Arsenal/status/787326366916153348
You cant even get your grammar right so jog on
Reading ‘jog on’ never fails to make me laugh as I always think of that scene from Shaun of the Dead
If you’re going to pedantically criticise Nlogs for accuracy, it’s probably best to spell write correctly. Right?
Or even Blogs. See?
Nlogs? If your going to correct someone on spelling, better make sure your spelling is korekt.
🙂
I think you meen “correct”.
Moaning at blogs for supposedly not quoting Wenger correctly and then you open yourself up to criticism for using the wrong right/write in your post!!!!!
Please make sure you get your sentences write
He is spot on
Difficult situation. The FA are dick heads and will make life difficult for you, even if you are in the right.
*even if you are in the write
I thought you miss 3 games for a straight red?
Nope, only violent conduct.
This is what FA does for straight red card
Denying obvious goal scoring opportunity – 1 match
Offensive/insulting/abusive language or gestures – 2 matches
Serious foul play/violent conduct/spitting at an opponent or any other person – 3 matches
Only for violent conduct. Bad challenge, even a studs up leg breaker, isn’t violent conduct.
Which is insane though in this case 1 match ban is more than enough
Actually, a studs up leg breaker can indeed be deemed ‘violent conduct’ and 3-matches.
I will mention but 2 disgusting words in support of this:
Ryan. Sh*wcross.
(Apologies for the above obscenities).
The only reason Moss could give for the red card is for “serious foul play;” nothing else applies. That means three games but, thankfully, one of them is in the league cup, where Xhaka would not have played anyway, and he can still play in Bulgaria in midweek.
*straigh read
Love the boss! But yeah you can’t argue that that wasn’t a strait red, hard to appeal that one.
Really
We all knew Xhaka came with red cards. Love him anyway.
In fact one of the reason l love him.
I mean, that means that he is ready to get stuck in and occasionally takes one for the team. Do more than playing football.
You mean at crucial times when said tackled player isn’t in a threatening area of the pitch, when our Centre Backs are in position and when the score is 3-2 (aka a really shitty time to go a man down against a bogey man team) ??
I think you need to re-examine when its a good time to “take one for the team” mate.
You see players doing this week in week out and we laud such tackles as intelligent… “saved a goal and took one for the team” we say… and rightly soo… the bloody referee was high today, I tell you!
Terrible refereeing..
Moss is a useless prick. Didn’t look like a red. Seemed to clip his right foot on Barrows as he was lunging, made him lose a bit of ground which made it look even worse. Even still, he shouldn’t have done it. Still love the great man. Lets just hope our Coq is up and about after a short period of being impotent.
What
He’s not too upset by the ban or card given that we won. Teaching tool for player and he was going to rotate squad anyway so this makes plan clear.
i don’t get the teaching moment thing. He did what he should have done.
Agreed. And how often have we called in the past for players who are prepared to do the dirty stuff, like break up opponents’ attacks? If he’d got a yellow, like he should have done, then we’d all be praising what he did.
Not sure why anyone would be in doubt why he did it, which is why it’s called a cynical challenge. And it sure was one of those. I have no problem with what he did and the red was a strange decision to say the least but we dealt with it. No problem at all. What I find as strange as the card itself though are those of my fellow Gooners who claim it was nothing. Like fuck it was. It was a blatant foul and he got found out. Sometimes you take your chances and take the consequences. It’s… Read more »
Who has said it wasn’t a foul? What most people have said is that he was taking one for the team, i.e. a yellow card. I don’t see how you can say ‘got found out’. He wasn’t trying to do it on the sly – he did it knowing full well that he should get a yellow card for a cynical foul, one which I’d be quite happy for our players to do more often instead of being nice and rolling out the red carpet for our opponents to score. Clearly Arsene doesn’t agree – maybe that’s why the players… Read more »
Not really, there was no tactical or common sense for tackling a guy in a non-threatening area of the pitch, when our centre backs were in position.
I praise what he did regardless of the red card. The red card is not his fault. The referee was an idiot. Xhaka made the right choice.
He hardly touched him and the ref gave us bugger all, all game. It was a yellow, never a red!
In fairness it was about as crystal clear as a foul can get. The red card is another matter. Yellow yes, but hardly a red.
If those Challenger are red cards now i am looking forward to the Arsenal playing 11 men againt 8 in half of the remaining matches. Cuz we get chopped down like that all the fucking time.
agree! it should have been an orange…
I’m sure Wenger gave the whole team oranges after the game. Even Xhaka.
I agree. After watching 20 min of the game I said that the ref would make the game difficult for us if he was given the chance. All 50:50 decsions were going against us, even throw ins. The ref was completely biased against us.
Cant
What a cant that ref is.
A bevel?
Can’t argue with a ‘dark yellow’.
AWesome by name and awesome by nature
It was more of a Diarrhea Yellow! He had a bad Curry at Mesut’s Birthday Party with a couple of dickheads there like Modric, Kroos and The walking Yellow Card/sometimes Red Ramos! Get your own friends! Mesut hangs with us now!
He had a very good game despite his two mistakes. Won the ball back well, looked more mobile, controlled the midfield while cazorla was quiet, dropped deep to pick up the ball and start attacks while their defence whilst their defence was still on the half way line. Our mobile front line relies on their being space behind the oppositions defence, that only happens when the ball is moved from defence to attack quickly, and that’s what xhaka gives us. I think his defensive game still needs improvement, and i think more energetic and mobile partner in Ramsey will be… Read more »
My favourite bit from him today was when he picked up the ball from the centre backs, dawdled a little, basically stationary while he drew the pressing forwards closer to him. Then slotted a 50 yard pass straight through their entire midfield to ozil’s feet between the lines in acres of space. It’s something that rarely if ever happened before, I have to think that ozil was somewhat wasted having to drop deep to babysit the midfield into playing well in our previous system
A shame that he tried the same basic trick (inviting Sigurdsson onto him to disrupt their press), cocked it up and gave up the goal. The bigger picture is of course that he’s still new to the league and can only get better.
It’s definitely how Wenger wants the side to play rather than just Xhaka – get the opposition to commit to the press, bypass/beat it and then exploit the space.
It was definitely red. If he merely pulled his shirt then a yellow would be warranted. He didn’t. He kicked him. Deliberately. No chance of getting ball. So… professional foul and deliberate kick. Red.
He didn’t lash out, just intentionally fouled the other player to stop a break away = yellow card. The fact that the player fell straight onto his knees and rolled about a bit should make no difference, but the ref has bought it and in his mind the whole thing was worse than it actually was.
It might be a little bit a blessing, because Coq seems to work a little better alongside Santi than Xhaka has been, and there seems to be a greater understanding between the two, which is expected due to the time they have hard to understand each other’s game
Just watched motd didn’t even discuss the red card a sure sign that it shouldn’t have been a red card
Or a sure sign that Linekar is still Spurs through and through. We played against a much better Swansea side, with new Manager fever, with just ten men for twenty minutes and all that lot at MOTD could do was lambast Walcott.
Yellow or red aside, it’s still a stupid challenge at the halfway line.
It was a 4 vs 2 if his challenge didn’t go in when it did
Yellow and half in my book – cynical but not “malicious” the resurgent Theo a joy as is Iwobi
Walcott had 5 chances but decided to take 2
Which is a huge improvement on the 0 from 5 we were seeing last few seasons……
For some reason the title of this article reminds me of Metro’s Arsenal webpage.
I’m more worried about the way Xhaka brought Swansea back in the game. Not his best game for us.
Looked like a mustard to me.
😀
I thought Granit had a great game personally apart from silly mistake leading to the goal. It happens. What was inexcusable was the second Swansea goal. As far as red cards are concern for Granit, one should also bear in mind that Viera had plenty of reds in his time with us. You want the bite but it comes hand in hand sometimes with the risk. People prattle on about how we need to close the game out with more authority forgetting that even with the Invincibles and our title winning teams of past, we were on occasion guilty of… Read more »
breath of fresh air! How many times in recent seasons have we seen arsenal’s players escorting an attacking player all the way to our box?
So, do you get told that your red is a 1 game ban or 3 game? How can you know?
Yes Coq is back but it’d be great to see Elneny out there next week
Can I just say how ashamed I am of some fans? I think its sad that those with lots of money but no love for Arsenal can go to the games and leave them game early when our team needs the fans the most.. And we with no money but only love for Arsenal are forced to watch these “fans” behaviour on the television.. LOWER THE TICKET PRICES SO THE LOVING FANS OF THIS CLUB CAN GO TO THE GAMES INSTEAD OF THESE PEOPLE WHO CLEARLY DONT WANT TO FOLLOW ARSENAL FOR FULL 90 MINUTES!!!
Never gonna happen mate. It’s not good business! Do not be fooled. The guys that run football are not fans. They are just businessmen in it for the money.
Thought the support was really good to day to be honest.Obvioulsy a few regulars hadn’t turned up near me but it was great to see at least 3 or 4 dads with their young kids in their place who had a blast.
What did piss me off is when we beat Chlesea for the first time in god knows how long and people were going at 80 minutes.The stadium was half empty at final whistle.
It pisses me off when people leave 5 minutes before half time to go to the bar or toilet, come back late. Then leave 10 minutes before final whistle coz they are desperate to go home. Worse still are those who stare at their phones during the game. Why bother to come.
Deliberate foul? Absolutely! Red card? No way! The decision yellow/red must be based on severity of foul when incident is at the halfway line. We should appeal as rank bad decisions that can lose team’s points should be highlighted
On the plus side you can now leave at full time to avoid the crush! 😉
I’m all for our players taking one for the team but perhaps a grab of the jersey is best in future. I know the red wash harsh but don’t give him the opportunity. Xhaka has been mighty impressive so far but yesterday was aet off considering the mistake for the goal and red card. I’m sure he’ll learn from it and get even better
My brilliant comment on Xhaka’s sending off.
Ahem (clears) throat. “A professional foul equals bright Red.”
I thank you.
No thanks needed as your comment is wrong!
Yes, strangely, there’s no place for us gooners on the moral high ground today. Which is unusual for us as it’s our natural home.
Arsenal have a strange relationship with the FA and press in that when we were obliterating teams Between 98 and 2004 with stunning football mixed with grit they admonished us for our ‘red card shame’. Then in the years that followed when we stopped winning titles it was because of our ‘soft underbelly’ and every pundit lined up to say we needed some grit and leadership.
So now here we are again with players prepared to fight and make fouls like that and we get red when its clearly a yellow for any other player/team.
Refs make mistakes because they are human. Not everything is a big conspiracy.
If no one made mistakes football would be boring. Strikers would score every chance. No one would miss a pass, goalkeepers would save everything that wasn’t impossible to save. Just get over it.
They understand the rules,they do not understand the game.
Never a red card
When rock-hard Granit is out for a game, our raging Coq will slide back in!
I wonder how many reds Chelsea would have seen during the years if that kind of tackles were punished with a red. At times they did this in pretty much every match
According to the FA rulebook: SENDING-OFF OFFENCES A player, substitute or substituted player who commits any of the following offences is sent off: denying the opposing team a goal or an obvious goal-scoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball (except a goalkeeper within their penalty area) denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity to an opponent moving towards the opponents’ goal by an offence punishable by a free kick (unless as outlined below) serious foul play spitting at an opponent or any other person violent conduct using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures receiving a second caution in the same match… Read more »
I hope this won’t prevent him from getting back into the team once he returns now that Coquelin is healthy. We will be fine with Coquelin in his absence, but Xhaka and his long range passing add so much to our attack and was doing very well.