An angry Arsene Wenger says that officiating at the top of the Premier League has not improved and that the Premier League have to examine the way they schedule games.
The Frenchman was speaking to Sky Sports just minutes after Mike Dean harshly awarded a penalty against the Gunners that West Bromwich Albion converted to secure a 1-1 draw against Arsenal.
Here’s what the boss had to say on Calum Chambers’ ‘handball’ and why his side looked so sluggish at the Hawthorns.
On Mike Dean’s decision to award a penalty…
It’s disappointing to see that, but can you do? We talk and talk and talk, it doesn’t change anything. The Premier League doesn’t face the problem, not with the schedule [of matches] nor with the referees. I would just like to remind that I did fight with David Dein many years ago to make the referees professional but their level, unfortunately, doesn’t go up.
On the decision being wrong…
Yes, it’s difficult to accept. It’s more than the decision that is involved in that. It’s not the first time that it’s happened. It’s best we don’t talk about it. We know deeply, what’s going on, we just have to deal with it.
On what Mike Dean said to him after the penalty…
Not a lot.
On whether he’ll speak to the referee again…
No, I won’t speak to him.
On whether Video Assistant Referee technology might have made a difference…
I think so. It’s time. I don’t know why the best league in the world waits for such a long time when other leagues use it already.
On the frustration also being down to the result…
Yes, but if we should have won and we’ve made a mistake, you deal with it. We have enough to stand up for. Overall, I feel that the schedule is not right, West Brom had five days to prepare for that game, we had three. Chelsea has four days to prepare for the game on Wednesday, we have three. Since the start of the season, the Premier League has to become serious about the scheduling and whether it’s fair or not fair. On our side, it’s completely unfair.
On Mourinho and other managers also complaining about the schedule…
Yes, of course, that’s even a better reason to look at it. Since the start of the season, you have always to look when you play against a team how long was their rest and how long was your rest. If we play every day, I have no problem. If the team you play also played the day before, I accept it completely. But the way they organise the schedule, it cannot be right. It has nothing to do with top-level sport.
On the schedule playing a part in Arsenal’s lack of sharpness…
Of course. Of course. When you have played top-level sport, you wouldn’t even question that.
Kudos to Arsene Wenger for keeping it civilized. If I’d been manager I would have been banned for a year for what I would have said to Dean.
Also I was going to call Mike Dean a cunt, but I suspect there are others who will be doing the same so I’ll save it for another Dean-referreed game.
“On the schedule playing a part in Arsenal’s lack of sharpness…
Of course. Of course …”
Of course its the fault of literally everyone except Wenger. He blamed the FA, the ref, the schedule, but his management of the team is just top class right?
I have to say I love your username, and I also agree with you. Arsenal should have put this dross away.
It’s not a zero-sum game.
Do you really expect a full blown self critical analysis after every game?
“Kudos to Arsene Wenger”, SERIOUSLY , Did you even watch the match, arsene is the one fu*ing the team up with his selections & useless tactics not mike fu*ing dean
how can anyone thumbs down this comment
Quite easily actually.
See, underneath comments there are two options; one is a thumbs up, the other a thumbs down. YOu click on the thumbs down and hey presto, that’s how you do it.
as i said before, it appears that most of you now have “Wenger’s mentality”, it’s never the teams fault :/
It can be both or a combination of both (or more).
I wouldn’t pat yourself on the back too hard.
https://youtu.be/si81XxId9zw this is a YouTube link showing Mike Dean celebrating a Tottenham goal against Arsenal in February 2012. Honesty is a rare gem don’t expect it from cheap thwarts like Mike Dean
Lol
I did mention this on another thread
The most meaningful sentence is ‘we know deeply what is going on’. Time for the executives at the club to start dishing the dirt. I’m sick of the dishonesty.
Stoke away, City away, Watford away, Westbrom away. Remind me if I missed any….Ahh United Home Welbeck stonewall penalty and many such incidents.
City not only have unlimited money but they also control the referees. Just watch Bournemouth vs City early in the season.
Excuse my naivety, but is he implying some sort of corruption?
No, he’s just saying that the standard of PL refs is poor, and he’s right.
The annoying thing is that until the penalty Dean had called most thing correctly and it was one of his better games…
I do think he is implying corruption but so far he has only come out on the standard of refereeing. The key for me is he is always talking about Italian referees being good and I feel he is indirectly saying English referees are influenced in some way.
Remember Wenger lost a league title at Monaco because of corruption.
It’s true that after the big match fixing scandal in Italy they changed their structures/systems so that it’s more difficult for any one official to influence a season, whereas the PL uses the same system/structure that Italy used when their scandal occurred, I don’t think he’s suggesting money is involved.
Just Bias and ineptitude.
Players can only blame themselves. They should’ve scored more than one goal and that penalty wouldn’t be a problem.
Lets say the team scored 2 goals and the referee gave the other team two penalties….would you still be asking the team to score more goals? It’s not about the numbers its about the principal. If it’s not a penalty it’s not a penalty…if everyone else can see it why can’t the ref? It wasn’t that difficult.
Dean is a c**t
West brom have won two games. They’re one of the worst teams in the league. If Dean is so anti arsenal wenger should have instructed the boys to make sure it didn’t come down to one dodgy decision. Wenger crying about it doesn’t help and neither does his smug, arrogant condescending attitude
Exactly. Mistakes will always be made, forever. Winners makes sure they are so good that bad decisions against them have minimal impact. Losers aren’t good enough to override the odd bad decision, hence they fail.
Do you seriously think we were coming away with 3 points whatever we did today?
Palace were rock bottom when they beat Chelsea..your point being?
And what was the result of the Palace v $iteh game?
When a team sets out for a 0-0 draw (as West Dean Albion did) and organise their defence properly, they regularly achieve it, even against the top teams.
In this instance they shouldn’t have but blind mike made sure they did.
Utter bollix of a decision yet again from Dean. OK, we weren’t great but had done just about enough to win it. One question however – does Cech practice saving pelanties? You just know every time we concede one, he won’t save it.
I think it’s safe to assume that he spends pelanty of time practising them.
Not sure why he brings up the scheduling. He mentioned recently just how good his squad was. Utilise it
Earlier in the season we were going to do really well as we could concentrate on the pl without the distraction of the cl
Just more excuses. We after Chelsea had the easiest run this xmas
He should be angry. The scheduling? Utterly clueless when you look at other professional sports leagues throughout the world. But, well, that’s a shambles for everyone and I doubt they’ll ever get it ‘right’. Dean, on the other hand, is something they could (finally) get right. His track-record is appalling (and it’s NOT just an Arsenal thing!) and I struggle to accept that there aren’t several refs coming up or on the fringes who are merely competent and thus a massive improvement over this bonehead. They demoted him about this time last year, rescinded all of his reds, and, yet,… Read more »
Wenger should have just said what he wanted about Dean. He’s been there long enough, what they gonna do that would scare him enough to back off? Fine him? He’s probably made more money over his career than the majority of his players.
he’s likely taken at least 100 million pounds out of the club, maybe 150 million. more than all of you put together would earn in 100 years
unbe-fucking-lievable!
last 10 years, he’s taken 70-80 million pounds.
what has the club got int return?
More lame excuses. Arsenal had six days off before the Palace game, whereas other teams had to play twice.
It was also a penalty as Chambers moved his hands towards the ball, they were not down by his side. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkc6sVFKK9g).
Maybe he should question why his team could only score a deflected goal against the worst side in the division.
Never a penalty.
I dunno. Being an unbiased chap, I always like to imagine what if the shoe was on the other foot? If Arsenal were 1-0 down and that happened to West Brom, you’d say it was ball to hand and Wenger would be going apeshit if it wasn’t given.
Nah. Even Pardew said it wasn’t a penalty.
“If Arsenal were 1-0 down and that happened to West Brom, you’d say it was ball to hand and Wenger would be going apeshit if it wasn’t given.”
Actually, I (and, no doubt, many others) wouldn’t – it would further serve to confirm Dean’s incompetence. But that would invalidate your argument, so…
Well, penalty or not, if that was a West Brom player touching it and it wasn’t given Wenger would be doing his nut.
I suppose my point is, whatever comes out of Wenger’s mouth is worthless. Every draw or defeat has the appendage of an excuse.
Prior to this comment you called yourself an “unbiased chap” yet you maleness a comment such as “whatever comedy out of Wenger’s mouth isn’t worthless?”
Yeah, real credible on that unbiased argument. :-/
It was never a penalty, but we should be tucking these lower level teams away easily. Our problem is we have a squad that has not been convincing even against the shite teams in recent years. Something needs to change, but we all know under wenger, nothing is ever going to change.
Yeah – and we won that game, with Palace not looking energised towards the end.
And it was never a penalty. As Cech said they even asked the referees explicitly about such incidents before the season! Plus according to the rules it isn’t a penalty. Plus those types of incident are often not given. So it does matter really.
“It was also a penalty as Chambers moved his hands towards the ball, they were not down by his side. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkc6sVFKK9g).”
Holy shit, I hope you have prescription glasses for driving. I don’t feel so safe on the road all of a sudden.
Glasses?
Binoculars more likely
No, it wasn’t a penalty. Watch it carefully and in slow motion. Not only is Ball-to-hand, but Chambers tries to pull his arm back down after the ball hits is arm.
It hit him on the arm which was in front of his chest.
If it hadn’t struck his arm it would have hit his chest.
He didn’t gain any extra control of the ball (as may have happened if it had hit his hand).
100% NOT A PENALTY and anyone that thinks it is, really shouldn’t be interested in football as it clearly isn’t your game.
I would say most of current Arsenal fans’ opinions are clouded by anti wenger bias. Whilst I am not a big fan of Wenger and his recent failures, I do not think he said much wrong today. Is asking for fair scheduling wrong? Wenger’s comments about NO English referee going to the WC was spot on, speaks volume about the refereeing standards in this country. I bet none of the so called pundits ever look at things like that.
didn’t hear anything about Sanchez’s lucky goal nor did he comment about horrendous penalty call that went in Arsenal’s favour at Burnley. One-eyed and blinkered as always
You’re talking about the Burnley Penalty that their own manager begrudgingly said’ Yes it was a penalty’. Yes he clouded the water by saying that of course it would be given because we’re a big club, but he did say it was a penalty!
As for the Alexis goal, yes it was a lucky deflection, and if a journalist had asked the question then I’d guess that he’d have said so as well, but they didn’t.
I’ve also read some fuck-wit comments elsewhere saying that he free kick Alexis scored from was wrongly given, but it’s 100% a free kick.
we’ve had Mourinho moaning about drawing with southampton, now Wenger moaning.
How about setting your teams up to beat inferior opposition?
Can somebody please come back with result details of when Mike Deen has refed
Our games over the last 10_15 years and how many pens he’s given
Only I think I am getting paranoid
d
I’m sue the ‘Untold Arsenal’ web-site guys will have most of that info somewhere.
Can you imagine if Arsenal had a manager like Pep? Definitely a title challenging team within two years. The squad is already strong, he’d recruit well, he’d improve the players, get rid of underperformers, Sanchez and Ozil wouldn’t be leaving, etc
If only the club had real football ambitions.
But no, Wenger calls the shots, and it’ll be more of the same every year, with even a fourth placed finish becoming more and more difficult
pete
Pep would never come. It’s too close to a challenge.
no, he wouldn’t come to an unambitious club run by mediocrities, like Sir Chips and his fellow privileged board members. and you can’t talk about City and their billions. Kroenke’s a billionaire many times over
Its not about how many billions you have as an owner. There is a difference to what Arsenal are going to spend within their budget. Unlike clubs like City and PSG and the like.
If ambition is only throwing money and “buying” a title then we differ on what ambition is.
Pep is a good manager but will always be knocked for only being at the most expensive clubs.
So who’s gonna give Pep a squillion pounds a season then. Kroenke? Ha bloody Ha.
I doubt he’d join us unless our board promised him 500m to spend.
That isn’t going to happen, is it…
Yes the penalty decision was terrible but so was the fact that Arsenal were not able to score until very late on against arguably the league’s worst team. Of course we can’t expect to win every game but we’ve gone from a team that had a reasonable chance of winning against anyone to a team with a reasonable chance of losing to any team.
When a team plan is to defend for a 0-0 draw then what can you expect.
The top 10 teams have all had games like this where they’ve left frustrated by a team defending well.
The usual thing is to run the opposition team around hoping they make a mistake late in the game (through bad luck or fatigue), which is what happened and we would have won if the ref hadn’t fucked up.
I agree you can’t do anything when a team does a good job in a defensive setup. Anything can happen in a game like this.
Only criticisms I have is the formation we started off with and not changing it up after SE injury or after Kos injury to a back 4. At that point I think it was clear WBA wasn’t a threat and we needed the full 3 points in a game like this. Not saying the outcome would have been different but who knows.
we put ourselves in these tight spots and prey to these sort of decisions bc we did not do enough to win the game and put distance.
We are short on quality.
Even IF Alexis should stay to end of season, we still need someone on right side who can add a bit of technical engagement.
Otherwise we are constantly so lethargic with out build up and transitions.
Manhrez comes to mind. Just get him. Sell Walcott FFS.
We need the technical quality.
I have no problem with Iwobi. He made an effort (Several at goals)
Lacazette I feel needs to step up. He doesn’t hold the ball up for us enough. A couple of decent efforts but not clearly enough.
I’m not sure why people think he is more ‘mobile’ bc he constantly doesn’t seem to be able to get to the ball. There was a reason why Deschamp started Giroud ahead of Lacazette for France.
Just saying.
This should of been the moment for Wenger to quit. Another inept performance against a bottom of the league side after nearly giving away a 2 goal lead to Palace. Playing 3 at the back made it easier for West Brom defence as less attacking players to mark. Hardly any service for Lacazette, no game plan apart from a line up that was made to collect one point which was all we deserved. If we continue to under perform the banners and protests will return. Wenger should realise this and put the club first and step aside. The scheduling is… Read more »