Just saw Don Hutchinson and Gab Marcotti discussing it:
This is an official who should never officiate a game again.
He had both hands on/around Mo for a good 10 seconds before he went down.
The problem is Mo went down after he took his hands off him. Well, of course the real issue is Mo wasnt getting the foul so had had to throw himself on the floor to give the ref a decision to make over something he was desperately trying to ignore. The arm over the shoulder is absurd and I there is so simply no reason for it to be there other than to illegally hold someone.
The way I saw it was he went down after the final tug by the defender, which of course means that by that time his hands were off Salah, even though Salah was already completely off-balance.
It’s immaterial when Salah went down. It doesn’t diminish the foul itself. Which it was. There’s no plausible reason for Gabriel having his hands all over him. Let alone holding/constricting him. It should have been a penalty. Referees need to up their game.
No pen given…but i think the forearm smasher was officiating on that side of the pitch…so we were never getting any decisions, pens, fk’s, …
Apparently it evens out over the season…
Of course it does. You got your tin foil hat on as well?
Probably miss it mind 
It’s shit when refs give defenders leeway, because it forces attacking players to play for free kicks. In Mo’s case, he’s not a natural diver like a Kane or Bruno, so he doesn’t have that first instinct of instantly going down under contact. So for a player like him, he’ll go down only after he’s had enough and by that time it’s effectively too late for the decision to be called.
IMO FK’s should never come down to whether contact infringed on an attacking player’s advance (ie. did they fall over?) but merely whether the contact broke the rules. Refs are too gutless to make the initial call unless they see the play acting. It makes me think back to that ref admitting we never got a penalty against the bitters because our players didn’t crowd the referee demanding a penalty.
Here is a side by side comparison of our home and away stats. I read a good article after the Bournemouth match showing how our xG for in away matches wasn’t bad, but that our xG against has been pretty poor. So making opportunities but also giving the home team opportunities as well. Couple that with how we have scored well below our xG for and conceded above our xG against and you have a recipe for disaster in away matches. Easy goals conceded while making hard work of scoring. There are no easy answers for our away form.
For me it’s not about having a soft spot for anyone.
I looked in on Bluemong once, and the stuff on there make the Arsenal stuff look like Mother Theresa wrote it.
Man City are for me everything that’s wrong in the way football has gone/is going.
That’s why I’d rather Arsenal win the league
I agree 100% on City.
My take is that there is a feeling that Arsenal are likable Londoners who are everyones new Leicester for the season.
I hope they, not City win the league.
But they have vile cunts in their supporters as well, and their players were like shooting victims every time they were challenged yesterday.
Not as much cunts as City, but lets be honest about them as well.
Stopped reading at likeable Londoners
Oh I forgot to add. I thought Xhaka should have been sent off for the forearm into the back of Trent’s neck. Absolutely no need for it. Then he reacts as if he’s been wronged because Trent had the audacity to respond back. Divvy.
My last comment on the Arsenal/City thing, I don’t like the idea that Arsenal have been shite for five years while we’d been fucking boss, and we’re both going to be on the same number of league titles in this spell.
It’s literally the first good season they’ve put together in a decade, and the jammy fuckers benefit from the two best sides in the country having dips at the same bloody time.
Yes, I’m fucking bitter and I need to grow up, but I can’t help it. It stings.
100% but we’ve been to 3 Champions league finals. How many have they been to in their entire history? That helps me.
How much have they spent?
Goes under the radar, but fucking loads.
