No, our mileage is not varying. What you are describing has nothing to do with fans claiming conspiracy against their team, as that is not what they are doing. Agreed. Which is to say that no one is claiming conspiracy.
In practice it's probably a distinction that doesn't matter much as what you will observe is Arsenal not get decisions favoured teams get. One of the most widely held conspiracy theories in the US is that wealthy oligarchs control politics. This arises from the real issue of vested interest/donors holding too much power in US politics. But it is hard to explain to people why one belief is a conspiracy whereas the other is evidence based.
Like in cricket, I believe the manager should be allowed to make 1-2 VAR challenges per game. These should be reviewed in front of the stadium and TV audience, and all the discussion should be live. Especially VAR / Ref should have to explain the decision.
That may all be true about *individual* players, but it's not what I've been talking about, which is basically the belief that Arsenal as a club is unduly discriminated against, maligned, punished, etc... by referees.
Our red card to leg break ratio SB Should be enough to demonstrate we aren't adequately protected by the enforcement of the rules of the game. The number of penalties won during the Wenger years despite being scornfully refered to as trying to walk it into the net, would be two. Worse than a conspiracy, is the unconscious bias that teams playing against Arsenal are given the benefit of the doubt all the time. Despite managers saying before the game that they are going to rough Arsenal up and get in their faces. How many careers were forever changed because they weren't adequately protected? Eduardo, Ramsey, Jack and Cesc at least.
Teams build reputations too. City may get the benefit of the doubt because they are the best team in England. We’re it not City, I suspect the Odegaard incident may have gotten a more thorough VAR review. But it was City, so of course their keeper got the ball. Ferguson’s teams got the benefit of the doubt for the same reason and the fact that Fergie intimidated referees. I don’t have the numbers at my fingertips, but Jitty likes to cite the season plus that United wasn’t punished with either a penalty or a red card. Finally, Arsenal have long had a reputation that they can’t handle bad weather or physical play. It’s possible that this reputation affects how referees see fouls suffered by Arsenal players. Subconsciously do some referees feel Arsenal need to show they can handle physical play. None of this requires a conspiracy or overt bias among the referees, it only requires a subconscious bias in some referees minds based on a team’s reputation and god forbid that you also have players whose reputations can end up costing your team points.
I think rather than any conspiracy against arsenal during the Fergus times, it was more that Arsenal were not one of the favoured teams, had many foreign players, and had players with bad reputation So other teams knew they could rough up Reyes etc whereas they knew you could not hack out Giggs. The fiasco at Old Trafford for the 50 games is a classic example. I don't think there was an express conspiracy for Utd to win, but rather the ref let Utd get away with highway robbery because SAF had that influence.
Idk - Riley's performance was sufficiently bad in that game that one could reasonably infer conspiracy.
The point Hill makes well is in these kinds of grey markets, things are not formal and may not even be express. I doubt an EPL team pays a ref off for example.
Conspiracies may be inferred via circumstantial evidence, as German corporate lawyers are undoubtedly aware.
"kick the everloving shit out of arsenal" wasn't even a "saying the quiet part out loud". it was both spoken out/about and accepted. by referees.
eh. accountability and transparency would do it, especially if the referee pool was expanded, became actually inclusive, and were actually competitively paid. as is, it occasionally peeks at sports entertainment.
“Breaking news: Premier League’s robo refs join @thebigman’s e-Fleshlights in call for robot unionization amidst claims of abusive workplace environments”
Those are two interesting and similar takes. And there's a lot of truth to our bully-able reputation back then (thankfully that's gone now?!). So my first two reactions are: 1. Has anyone ever done some honest comparative analysis of reckless/malicious tackles which result in significant injuries/outages? It'd be interesting to see if Arsenal are really way in the lead on that table. 2. If the refs lack of "protection" for Arsenal players in the past was significantly due to our reputation, as you posit, then surely the club could've worked harder to change that over the years by redeveloping our team, increasing our "toughness". It doesn't seem like we did that very well (especially Wenger?) so perhaps that's really on us, more than being from an external conspiracy or bias.
it's only "gone" in terms of teams not really needing to kick us and rough us up as much to beat us. otherwise? keep an eye on how many times saka gets kicked and "rotational fouled", both mcnicholas and mangan have been harping about that for months. i'm not sure i follow. is your solution to saka being mcarthur'ed, ramsey getting shawcross'ed and reyes being kicked off the pitch by neville to be . . . . less injured by those kicks? to me, there are 2 things that we needed to do as a club: 1) given we had/have enough leverage to be in that whatever group and be a part of the superleague (even with our recent results), that we didn't raise more hell and put more pressure on the FA for their handling of the referees who failed their job was a failure by our club. 2) i've said this for year and still feel this way: we need to buy some cunty asshole from mid-championship who is willing to wreck somebody for earning premier league wage with minimal playtime and the next time someone mcarthur's saka, send him in and send a message with their best player. (bonus pay for him if, on the way out after getting red, said cunty asshole walks by the opposing manager and say, "the kroenkes send their regards.") accept that we play with 10 men for that game and might lose. but message sent. one thing brought up by mangan and mcnicholas after a recent comfortable win where the usual "xhaka lost his head with a bad tackle unnecessarily again" was bandied about was that, coincidentally or not, it came right after one of our players was kicked about again. and he appears to be the one player on our team who does it.
and then there's this bullshit. Regulation and Discipline update on @Arsenal: pic.twitter.com/6StoSuYvVX— FA Spokesperson (@FAspokesperson) January 5, 2022
What I meant by increasing our "toughness" was similar (but not as dramatic or singular) as your point #2. To rebuild our squad with players (not just one extreme cvnt as you suggest) who are more physical/enforcer/take-no-prisoners types. I think you could make the case that we've made good progress in that regard. From our recent XI... Those who coming to mind are: Ramsey, Gabriel, White, Tommy, Xhaka, and Laca. Perhaps more debatable are: Tierney, Partey, Odegaard. And not clear to me yet: Martinelli. So that's 1/2 to 3/4 of our XI who exhibit noticeable "toughness" me thinks. Am I wishful thinking?
I guess that's when we swarmed the ref and Gabriel got his 2nd yellow. If so, I have no problem with that disciplinary action. I'm fine with them cracking down on that kind of behavior... if it's enforced fairly and evenly. Also, had we not done that, and especially if Gabriel had just "got on with it" we would've finished 11-v-11 and quite likely would've gotten point(s) from this game.
That’s kind of the issue. The irony of getting a charge like this against City of all teams shouldn’t be lost on anyone. They swarm the ref for random inconsequential foul calls, let alone when they have a player sent off.