Football is a low scoring game, unlike say basketball or rugby. A goal in football has a rarity value and has a disproportionate effect on the result compared to other sports. For years penalties were a rare event given only where the punishment of a probable goal was a reflection on the seriousness of the offence. In the past few years as football has become a non-contact sport (and in many ways has improved enormously for it) penalties are much more common, and for those who have watched football since the 60s and 70s are too easily given. I’m a Leicester fan but each of the three given yesterday v Man City were very soft, and two were ‘induced’. They were soft, and resulted in a handsome but for me a slightly hollow victory.
When a penalty is awarded for a genuine foul or obvious and intentional handball, that’s fine, but now that the outcomes of games are being decided by trivial minor incidents it’s time for a rethink. I’ve said for years that awarding a penalty and therefore a very probably goal for v minor offences and now for completely unintentional handball is out of proportion to the offence, and that a penalty is the wrong reward. A direct free kick inside the penalty area is sufficient, in the following circumstances:
When a foul is committed where the attacker is going away from goal, or is heading out of the penalty area into open play (so not towards the goal line)
Where the likelihood of a goal is minimal - crowded area; player is losing control of the ball; oh it’s Heskey.
Contact is absolutely minimal and the attacker has exaggerated either the contact or the effect. The 11pm rule applies here - if a player goes down in the box as if shot by a sniper in response to minimal contact, would it be realistic if the same contact were to occur at chucking out time in a dodgy town centre pub? No is the usual answer, so a penalty should not be awarded.
That’s the gist of it. Penalties are being given for the slightest minor infractions where there is no realistic chance of a goal anyway. In that case a free kick is enough, with the same punishments handed out as now - yellow or red as appropriate.
Can’t help but feel if I was playing the ball anywhere into the box, I wouldn’t bother going for goal or a team mate any more, I’d just aim for any arm I could see!
That’s what’s happening, Spurs did it yesterday. So we end up with football being decided by who can hit an arm that’s some arbitrary distance from the body while defenders jump around like penguins.
To paraphrase former Premier League referee Peter Walton in today’s Times, ‘VAR has removed the referee’s discretion as to whether the player had the deliberate intention of handling the ball’. And, ‘We have turned the judgement of handballs into a science when it should be an art.’
Completely agree. As a long-suffering Spurs fan it’s hard to be objective about the decision in yesterday’s game. We should have been 3 or 4 up and then the ridiculous penalty decision wouldn’t have affected the outcome. The fact that we weren’t was entirely our own fault.
However, when you need multiple replays and an almost legal parsing of the text of the rule book to decide whether it’s a penalty or not then it’s gone too far. Let referees make the call for obvious fouls in the box and VAR for when clear and obvious decisions are missed.
I thought Liverpool deserved their win against the Gunners but if I were a Liverpool fan I’d be a bit concerned at how holes kept appearing in the centre of their defence.
We where poor Arteta got his selection and tactics wrong this time we wasted 45 mins with everyone behind the ball and when we did come out of our shells Lacazette fluffed it to make it 2-2.
At one point we where getting some joy down the right and Bellerin did a foul throw his second of the night £100,000 a week and can’t take a throw in and Pepe £100,000 a week is totally one footed and couldn’t take a corner properly just poor.
Liverpool are there for the taking at the moment they are really poor defensively but unlike Leeds we gave them far too much respect.
Hey Bob. I think you’re overstating Liverpool’s lapses. Their high line is obviously the chink in their armour – but you need the tools to get through, and Arsenal didn’t have them. The loathsome Ceballos made a slight difference, but that was a thrashing. Liverpool were superior in every department.
Yes, Lacazette missed a golden opportunity, but Liverpool should have been at least three ahead at that point.
We’ve seen expensive goofs from Van Dijk and Robertson so far this season. But that doesn’t make them “really poor” defensively. Arsenal are much improved after the comedy managers of recent years, but they’ve still got a long way to go.
I beg to differ, Bob. It went beyond recruitment and players. Wenger started out well, but was a poor coach; players regressed under him. He inherited a great defensive tradition and let it erode. He then stayed on well past his sell-by date. Most of his creativity was reserved for excuses.
Unai Emery was an unmitigated disaster, whatever he may have done at Sevilla. His tactics were a mess, his coaching was clearly confused, and it was obvious he’d fail even before he moved into his new office at the Emirates.
Both comedy gold.
For further evidence, look what a good coach has done with pretty much the same group of players.
As you wish. But on a related note: Arsenal were the first team I went to see, starting in 1966, against Leeds at Highbury. I must have seen them a couple of hundred times since, but never at the Emirates. They’re not an entirely unknown quantity to me.
After getting over the disappointment of last night and after talking to people with a much sunnier disposition there where some positives last.
We where actually still in the game with 88 minutes and could easily have drawn level with Lacazette.
Liverpool did not dominate us in that first half we allowed them to dominate us because that was Arteta’s game plan in the first half draw them on and then get behind their high press and then second half make sure we are still in the game with 20-30 minutes left then make substitutions.
It was a little negative but with the players he has it was realistically Arteta’s only game plan. The next week will make or break our season we need at least two signings a defensive midfield player and a creative attacking midfielder because we do not have the players to mount a serious challenge for a top four spot.
My point about Liverpool being beatable is this they have come good when each and every team around them and I’m including Man City in this are far, far from their best
the likes of Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Spurs and now Leicester are either in transition or are simply not at the levels they should and could be. A well drilled side could get at Liverpool and beat them look at Leeds if they had been better defensively they would have beaten them.
