Last week we heard numerous bizarre justifications for Emmanuel Adebayor's pathetic red card decision from Howard Webb, I just watched the recording of MOTD again and heard the commentator's illogical explanation for it being that Adebayor raised his foot, tell me how you move your foot with boots on without lifting your foot into the air and I'll be impressed, do these morons want players to scrape their boots along the turf in order to move? The media's deathly silence after Rooney's vicious elbowing speaks volumes.
Again the media are spinning things this week, Arsene had the nerve to point out the (undisputed I may add) fact that the Villa No 2 spoke to the referee at half time. Strangely the media have spun Arsene's comments as him blaming the referee for the second half capitulation, here are his actual words and you can make your own minds up:
"At half-time the referee gets stick and in the second half, every 50-50 decision went to them. I decided to wait and see what happened after half-time and I was not disappointed. It is not only at Villa where it happens. I don't feel the need to elaborate any more."
All Arsene did was remark upon the events of half time as he is perfectly entitled to do, the talk of the FA asking him to explain himself is ridiculous when they routinely allow other managers to get away with the clear intimidation of officials. Is it appropriate that a club's assistant manager is speaking to a referee during a half time break? O'Neill claims it was just to seek an explanation, this doesn't cut the mustard for me, it's simply inappropriate for words to be had with a referee at half time like this, it is applying pressure of sorts no matter what is said. If words need to be had then they can be had after the game so that the referee is not further biased.
Certainly the bias of the media is rather clear, instead of admitting their error in predicting a Villa win, they would prefer to unfairly label Arsene a 'whinger' for pointing out an undisputed fact. O'Neill felt there was a foul in the build up to one of our goals, Arsene felt there was a foul on Gallas before the penalty decision. Both managers are entitled to their points of view, so how on earth can one be labelled a whinger while the other escapes criticism completely? The media's biased reaction is giving the game away.
On the transfer front Arsene is bound to say that there will be no signings, whether he has plans for any or not. It would simply be foolish to admit he had lots of money to spend, price would be further inflated and his transfer raids would be less well disguised. We should wait and see what he does, then judge him by his actions and our results, launching into criticism before he's had time to act is neither big nor clever.
