Atletico v Arsenal was ‘football on codeine’ as Eze accused of dive
The only real drama in Atletico v Arsenal was official-based or in the tunnel. What a contrast to PSG v Bayern.
We also have Manchester United fans not convinced by Michael Carrick. Mail us at theeditor@football365.com
Atletico v Arsenal was boooooooring
Boring. Not just dull – properly, relentlessly boring. The only hint of attacking intent came from the penalty spot, which says it all really. The highlight? A touchline spat that had more bite than anything on the pitch.
And while we’re here, the whole “club crest on the floor” thing remains baffling. If you don’t want it stepped on… maybe don’t put it where people’s feet go?
Anyways, if Arsenal are serious this summer, they don’t just need reinforcements — they need imagination. Something with spark, urgency, and a bit of chaos. Because this? This was football on codeine.
Gaptoothfreak, Man Utd, New York (Still awake, somehow)
Arsenal done by the officials (again)
Of course, penalty drama. And not just any drama, the return of our old friend, ‘clear and obvious’.
Now, I’m certain every fanbase has this feeling. It probably comes from the way your memory works, the injustices stacking up rather than the ones you sneak away with.
But man, does it feel like we’ve been done particularly badly here, in a way that happens to us ALL THE TIME.
Full disclosure: I would have been irritated if we’d conceded that penalty up the other end and grudgingly ok if it’d not been given.
But it was. So what I want to know, is what was said to the referee by VAR. I would like it to be public please.
Because if the rule is now, for any marginal 50/50 decision, VAR has a nice chat with the referee about what he saw and asks he justifies the decision, then the VAR guy goes ‘I don’t agree mate, have another look’, then you could explain what we saw.
Except that would be mental. Every decision, VAR not just watching what happens but second guessing what the ref sees. Whether they give them the benefit of the doubt (oh he’s my pal, great set of eyes) or doubt them.
Maybe it’s an NFL style thing, where every penalty decision is reviewed. I actually wouldn’t hate that, but also make penalties much harder to win in that case and have an intermediary indirect penalty box free kick for things not at that threshold. Penalties have always been too overpowered for minor infractions.
But I digress. This is not the world we live in and yet here we are. Can we know if the referees next week will vibe the same way? Maybe they will, maybe they won’t and now somehow we have less certainty and potentially more people’s opinions impacting a game rather than fewer. Who’s accountable? Who knows.
Cowards, the lot of them.
Still, would have taken 1-1 at the start of the game, prayed for it at 60 mins and probably was fair at 90.
See you next week fellas (hopefully not you Julian).
Tom (we got our lucky penalty against Leverkusen to be fair, maybe it just evens out in the end) Leyton
Arsenal Twitter is bloody mental isn’t it?
– Apparently the Eze dive is a stonewall penalty. There was lots of posting of stills because obviously football isn’t a game involving any motion. Let’s ignore the fact it is a proper dive and should’ve included a booking for simulation.
– Atletico watering only one side at half time was blatant cheating. I’ve seen this for years in the premier league, FA Cup and Champions League but because it’s been done to Arsenal it’s cheating obviously.
– White’s handball was never a penalty. Let’s ignore that his hand actively moves towards it.
– The Gyokeres penalty should’ve been accompanied by a red card too for denial of a goal scoring opportunity. Let’s just entirely ignore that UEFA changes the rules around this triple punishment obviously.
This is from a single Arsenal fan’s account and he’s not some 17 year old sleeping in his Ian Wright pyjamas, it’s a lawyer who I think is in his late 30s. He might still have Ian Wright pyjamas to be fair. Who doesn’t love Ian Wright if we are being honest. If anyone sends me some Ian Wright pyjamas I’d probably wear them… Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth etc.
Griezmann is a complete delight to watch. That was my other takeaway from an otherwise poor quality match. Neither of those teams are good enough to beat PSG in my humble opinion. This game made me sad that I fell asleep and didn’t watch the proper semi final last night.
Minty, LFC
Screen rant
Let’s face it – if the ref goes to the VAR screen he’s changing whatever his original decision was. Changing your mind becomes the safer choice.
If the ref hadn’t first awarded the penalty to Arsenal for the foul on Eze and then been sent to check it on VAR, he would have changed his mind and awarded it.
Such is the power of being told to check your homework.
Damian, Dublin
Harry Kane comes up short again?
A nine-goal semi-final and yet again Harry Kane fails to score in open play in a semi/final. History repeating itself.
Ben Teacher
An Arsenal view on that Champions League semi
After PSG and Bayern treated the football-watching world to 9 goals, 90 solid minutes of scintillating play, and some of the most beautiful and clinical finishes you’ll see for a long time I just knew the F365 Mailbox would be full of “Arsenal this” and “Arsenal that”. We have one person suggesting that Arsenal should just throw in the towel now, we have another lamenting how Arsenal would cope should they land either PSG or Bayern in the final.
All I saw in that game was two sets of brilliant attackers doing brilliant attacking things, and two awful sets of defenders. Arteta and Simeone will have watched that game, would have been very entertained by it, and would have quietly thought to themselves that they have a very decent chance of winning the Champions League as the other, more lauded, teams cannot defend for toffee.
Arsenal have played Bayern this season already in the Champions League and they won 3-1. Noni Madueke scored. Mosquera, Lewis-Skelly and Trossard started. Merino started up top. Luis Diaz did not play for Bayern. Gabriel did not play for Arsenal. Arsenal had 14 shots to 6, 8 shots on target to 2, whilst Bayern had very tidy possession and passing stats. Crucially Arsenal had 6 corners.
I’m fully prepared for the backlash, but whoever it is out of Arsenal or Atletico who reaches the final would absolutely fancy themselves against PSG or Bayern. They absolutely would. I think either team would prefer to face Bayern, as I think PSG are the better of the two, but yeah, absolutely, Arteta and Simeone are probably looking forward to the semi final less than they are looking forward to the final.
I suppose it does beg the philosophical question of whether Arteta or Simeone’s brand of football belongs in the Champions League final, but that’s for another mail I think.
Dale May, Swindon Wengerite
…Despite being treated to ‘ the best Champions League semi final of all time’ …everybody wants to talk about Arsenal. Gargantuan club.
Colin. Dublin AFC
What about the defending in PSG-Bayern?
Fabulous game. Open, exciting. Anything could happen. And the natural question is why Premier League teams that did so well in the group phase, failed to deliver anything close to this in the knock outs – well, deliver at all.
But on introspection, the defending wasn’t great. It was clear Bayern, at least, deliberately decided to make it an open game – thinking the opposite of Slot – if I can’t defend well against PSG, I might as well go for it. Not unlike Chelsea in the summer at the World Club thingy.
We see that at lot in the later CL rounds, with high scores. Teams confident in themselves – confident they can score one more than their opponents. But this also seems to be a symptom of their home league. Not pushed hard by most teams, no need to defend in depth. As opposed to the EPL, where every team (at the top) is pushed hard to win. Perhaps the reason City and Liverpool (albeit failing) attempted to up the ante in attacking resources – beat the blocks and perhaps fair better in the CL knock out phases.
Of course, this is in juxtaposition to the other semi-final to two teams that historically and recently, focus more on keeping it tight. An excellent contrast this year. No matter which team from each side of the draw makes the final, it will be a case of two opposing ideas.
Can’t wait for the return leg.
Paul McDevitt
Interims and etymology
I’ve been looking into the records and it seems Man Utd *have* had a good manager over the last decade. He goes by the mononym ‘Interim.’ I’m being tongue in cheek but seriously how long could they keep someone as interim?
OGS, RVN and now Carrick overseeing league challenging form whilst holding that position, and with the prem apparently reverting to more classical English play it could be the perfect time for the traditional Man U style. They’d be mad not to hang onto him; as interim, of course.
Also, thank you Ben. Firstly the normalisation of authoritarian, abusive, environmentally harmful regimes represents a clear and present danger to all of us. Quite possibly the entire future of our species.
F*ck trophies; Mansour Out!
Ok, the word sincere may come from the Latin sincerus which a few academics at the OED have decided is probably a compound of words meaning ‘one root or growth’ but they don’t know – it’s really a best guess.
Bear in mind that they live in the stuffy, reputation driven world of academia, so of course, have to think their guess is the right one.
Consider this: the only way to have multiple growths on one root is through grafting. Still a pretty sweet etymology if it means ‘not-grafted’, however, it defies logic; we don’t describe the product of grafted trees as unpure or fake in any way so it’s hard to see how the word could exist with that meaning in the first place.
The ‘without wax’ explanation may go all the way back to the honey sellers of ancient Rome! It’s also plausible and at least it makes sense.
Loving the chat but why don’t you tell us who you support?
Hartley MCFC Somerset (Sport apparently comes from ‘to carry away’ (the mind). Which would make the phrase ‘carried away by sport’ a tautology.)
Ruby v Carrick
I had been meaning to do this comparison at some stage but now seems an opportune time, given the discussion around Carrick’s future.
The tale of the tape when comparing Amorim this season to Carrick (in the league) is as follows:
Games managed: 20 – 13
Goals Scored per game: 1.7 – 1.8
Goals Conceded per game: 1.5 – 1.1
Points per game: 1.6 – 2.2
So, around the same output in terms of attack, but notably better in terms of defence and consequently, the most important metric, number of points. If we had continued under Ruby and had a similar level of output, we would likely be sitting 6th (of course we’ll never know if there would have been an improvement or even a downturn).
With Carrick’s PPG across 34 matches we would be first, 2 points ahead of Arsenal – break out the bubbly (of course sustaining it over a season is a different matter and we have seen how easy it is to bottle these things). I would hesitate to conclude that this was purely a system issue, Maguire and Martinez were missing for large parts of the first half of the season for instance.
Plus, we can see a similar system works for Palace (3rd best defence in the league). But whether it was systemic or personnel or a mix of both, it clearly wasn’t working for the defence. Whilst Ruby improved the attack over the summer, he might have been better putting greater focus on defence and building from there.
Carrick (and his team) have made us harder to beat and more defensively sound, although we would need to tighten up a bit more to match Arsenal and City (0.8 & 0.9 GCPG respectively). However, I do still have nagging doubts around breaking down a low-block, and an overreliance on Bruno as our key provider rather than having an attacking system in place in case he is injured or rested.
We definitely don’t hold the ball well enough at times and need to move towards a more possession-based approach, not necessarily to the same level as the likes of City but definitely an increase to allow us to have a better control of games – it’s not rocket science to suggest the more we have the ball the less likely the opponent will score.
In terms of the future, I can’t see how they can’t give the job to Carrick. The concern is we start badly and then have wasted a summer; although, if recruitment is as strong as last summer then perhaps not. Of course it’s a risk but every manager is, unless they can convince Enrique or Ancelotti to take a leap of faith. In conclusion, get the contract out, put it on the table, sign da ting, let him write whatever numbers he wants to put on there – it’s Carrick you know!! Can’t fathom how this can possibly go wrong and don’t think we have seen this play out before.
Garey Vance, MUFC
The problem is that Carrick’s Man Utd play poor football
Have the people who think Carrick should get the job actually watched Man Utd play under him? We have been terrible. We are consistently the 2nd best team in our games. We do however happen to have one of the greatest creative talents in the world in Bruno Fernandes.
Carrick has given no indication he can out think another Premier League manager. He’s given no indication that he can make clever tactical changes mid match to influence the game. He simply waits for Bruno to do Bruno tings. Its just base level decision making i.e. play your best player and he will do good tings. Its the equivalent of turning the electricity on in head office and then claiming full responsibility for the success of the business.
We just got outplayed by Brentford at home. Just like we got out played by Leeds at home prior to this, and just like we got outplayed by 10 men Newcastle a few weeks before. Do people have eyes? Can they not see how bad the football has been? Are these “Carrick In” people mad? The results are clearly not sustainable. The league position clearly not sustainable. We are up against a terrible Liverpool Team, a terrible Chelsea team, a terrible Newcastle team, an OK Villa team and a terrible Spu…. oh forget that one.
Michael Carrick has succeeded in being slightly less sh*t than all of the above teams. The bar at Ynited is low… but it cant be this low. The Club needs to aim high (Enrique, Tuchel, Nagelsmann), if not them.. then aim a little lower (Emery, Iraola, Mourinho), if not them… then a little lower (Carrick – one year contract).
This is a legit chance for United to get an important decision right for the first time in a longgggggg time. Lets see if they have the balls/business acumen to make the right decision.
Shz