so can anyone tell me why this guy still receives a paycheck from Arsenal FC? his commentary during games are so over the top, its painful to hear. even efan ekoku likes arsenal more than this guy, and i wish i'd never hear him ever again. he is trying to seem unbiased, so he skews it so far the other way? its embarrassing that we pay this guy at all. today was pathetic. he had us fighting relegation with his comments.
yeah, and the form of the last 9 games hasn't been far off relegation form if taken over a season. i didn't hear his commentary, but it surely couldn't be any harsher than every other ex-player who has been watching their club slowly turn into a kindergarden for toothless prepubescent spoilt children. i'm sure stewart isn't too worried if he has offended some akb's.
yet we deservedly beat United last week, were we doomed then? our problems are tactical and psychological, that's all there is to it. What would Robson (who is hardly amongst the Arsenal greats, but there you go) suggest is the way forward? Besides, how can a commentator on a commentary highlight the team that provides expected to be unbiased? He's not Martin Tyler on Skysports, or Ian Darke on ESPN.
true, but maybe he has licence to call it as he sees it? the official podcast with tom watt isn't always full of praise either. didn't hear it. did he say we were doomed? not a great, no, far too injury prone, but was with the club for 8 years and won arsenal player of the year at least once. injury free and at his peak he was a pretty decent player.
great prospect, broke through at the start of the 80's. looked fantastic, but always got bloody injured. sold for £650k when graham took over (good money back then).
Yeah he does the tactics stuff on either 360 or Arsenal World don't remember which one. As to the original post I agree with you phishy and actually mentioned it during the match thread. He slagged off WS53, JFW, Wenger and I think Theo all in the space of 5 minutes. Before I knew it was him I thought the guy must have hated Arsenal and was going to start praising shawcross and saying Arsenal needed someone like him or something crazy.
Phishy, take it with a grain of salt and let it go. I would rather have one of our own slagging us off than the other cretins. e.g. Dan Mason and his crew of morons on the ESPN Soccernet podcast. By the way his tactics segment is not half bad.
i'm okay with calling it like you see it. hell, i'm in favour of it. i don't like and don't want homer biased commentary (like i heard on MUTV when i was watching the reserve game) but phishy is absolutely correct that he's absolutely and stunningly slanted in his commentary. like he has a vendetta. some of the ones that come to mind from sunday were: 1 - sagna running around the left back to get around him and the dude accidentally cracks him in the mouth with his elbow (as his arm waved and he was trying to shield sagna while running). dude knew it and went to apologise (as oppose to try to yank him up if he felt that it was playacting). robson immediately tries to claim that sagna was overacting. 2 - wilshere goes in with a hard (and admittedly rash) tackle on whitehead who gets all in a hissy (i love irony) and gets in wilshere's grill. because wilshere didn't tuck his tail between his leg and run away whined like a little bitch, robson immediately goes into a rant of how wilshere always get into a row and he needs to accept being kicked and walk away. because that's what messi does, don't you know? 3 - huth goes for a corner and heads it, pulls song down in the process by his shirt and, in the process, song landed on his leg so huth was trying to push song off his leg (understandably). song, who'd just been pulled down hard enough to where his shirt ripped, is now getting pushed by the same person and, understandably (at least to me), has a "WTF?" moment and is pissed. robson immediately goes on a rant about how song just has no reason to be mad at being pushed (even though robson himself didn't notice that song had fell on and been on huth's legs). 4 - wilshere goes for a fairly harsh looking tackle on pennant who does a dramatic jump and fall then gets mad at wilshere. robson immediately calls for a red on wilshere even though referee and linesman didn't whistle for it (until wilkinson did a karate kid-style takedown on wilshere - which robson, by the way, had no problem with). reply later showed that wilshere got ball (and, even though his boots were off the ground, it wasn't studs up) and ball/man got carried into pennant by momentum to cause pennant to flip after his dramatic swan dive and robson's eventual response was, "well, maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked". 5 - after the other announcer realised that they'd been slagging wenger and arsenal for the whole 'cast, he tried to make it seem less bad by attempting to toss some credit toward wenger and saying that wenger was, in fact, the best in the world at working with and bringing along youngsters. robson, who hadn't been able to shut his trap the whole game, immediately went on radio silent until the next major action. maintaining impartiality is good as is calling it like it is. but being absolutely slanted is retarded.
I thought he was tough during the Stoke game, but Arsenal didn't play well. So what else is he going to say. Since he does the analysis on ATVO, I think he has extra insight into the team and it mostly comes out as negative. But I never get a sense he is rooting against the team which I get in other commentators.
Robson's a good, relatively smart analyst. I prefer him to most of his counterparts. I really can't recall his comments during the Stoke match or any others you refer to, but I can tell you that for the last several months on ATVO he'd been saying that he genuinely still thought we could win the league, if we just executed properly. So when he's been publicly critical of us, it reminded me more of a frustrated fan (or past servant). And I for one value his willingness to openly share his disagreements with Wenger and his players/choices. Robson's biggest fault I think is that he talks too much about Arsenal's players & strategies, and not enough about the opponents... who he clearly knows way less about. As for Martin Tyler, he's getting on in years and a bit past his peak, but he's still by far my favorite caller of a footy match. There's only one... Martin Tyler. And AFAIK he's also a Gooner. But unlike Robson, he keeps that in his pocket, which is probably smart.
so this morning he absolutely destroys theo walcott (although i agree with him here). he also goes on to say that arsene doesn't care about losing van persie, as he will just build a new squad with different players who will set 4th place as the goal. while he is probably correct, how is he on the Arsenal payroll again? guy rips the club every chance he can.
Agreed, I almost think that he rips the team on purpose to come off sounding unbiased, but he takes it over the limit. There is no need for him to be banging on and on about how bad the team is and how much he thinks we dive and moan too much. I'd like to see that idiot get tackled and see how long it takes him to get up and recover.
He's dead against diving, simlation, play acting, whatever you want to call it. He calls out anyone on Arsenal or any other team he's commentating on. Frankly I think he's spot on about this. I've been watching footy for quite a few decades and I remember a time when diving was miniscule compared to today. These supreme athletes used to actually try to stay on their feet in the box so as to try to have a shot. Today it's basically the opposite. I don't love everything that Robson says during his color commentary. But on things like this, I stand by him.
Dont forget Robson is on the payroll. This could be a veiled message to Theo, he isnt worth a big pay rise and he should know it.