There has been a lot of reaction to the issue of yellow cards in the Arsenal v Man City game – I am sure you can’t have missed it,
But just in case you did there’s a piece in the Liverpool Echo which summarises the approach of much of the media.
As one of my colleagues at Untold pointed out to me, rather aptly I thought, there is an approach to sending offs and other punishment which seems to suggest that a) if a referee colleague is having a bad week he needs to be helped out, and b) that the laws of the game are to be interpreted according to the moment we are at in the game.
The Liverpool Echo said, “The defeat for Pep Guardiola’s side was overshadowed by the decision not to send off midfielder Mateo Kovacic for a rash tackle on Martin Odegaard.
Minutes later, the Croatian lunged in on another Arsenal midfielder, Declan Rice, but escaped punishment in the form of a second yellow card.”
Premier league matches are surround by Man city conterversiery
“Overshadowed” is somewhat odd – it certainly didn’t feel that way in the ground. Joy was unbounded not just where I sit, but everywhere within the ground,
Everywhere outside the ground, and in the nearby pubs where fans gather to watch the game.
And a little later the comment was add, “Our referee is one of the best referees in the world,
He will view that, he doesn’t want to have a negative impact on the game by overreacting to something.”
Now that “one of the best” comment is particularly interesting because it is something that has turned up in the media quite a lot recently.
There’s no justification for it, no analysis, just the statement,
“He’s one of the best,” and we are expect to believe it. So I guess most people do.
What is missing from that and every other analysis that
I have seen is the fact that Untold covered in March last year that
“Arteta and his team have developed a set of videos that show exactly how each referee works”.
As we noted, “This is in fact merely an extension of the policy of two seasons ago in which the club change.
Its approach to tackling and so reduced the number of yellow cards from over 80 to around 40.
