Arsenal lose final...

**gameboy** · 17-05-2006

Arsenal 1-0 Barcelona - at half time.

Arsenal down to 10 men with goalkeeper sent off...

Com'on the gunners...

**rolfw** · 17-05-2006

Looks like they are going to struggle to keep the lead though. Not doing badly considering the one man deficit.

**gameboy** · 17-05-2006

1-1

Keep the nerve...

**gameboy** · 17-05-2006

Barca go 2 - 1 ahead with less than 15 mins to go.

Henrik Larsson 'on' and involved in both goals - quality player.

**gameboy** · 17-05-2006

Barcelona win 2- 1 after a great game.

The best team in Europe.

**Topper** · 17-05-2006

Blow the assistant refs being biased as mentioned on the radio news, the ref was truly awful, Arsenal were playing 10men against 12.

Robbed in my opinion

**Salty25** · 17-05-2006

Totally agree. A combination of extremely poor refereeing, the illogical sending off of Lehmann and the subsequent loss of Pires and a substitution, and added on tim 2 minutes less than was required due to stoppages, made Arsenal's task almost impossible, even with Ronaldinho having a horror night.

The Arsenal defense should, however, be honoured for holding out for so long, especially Campell, Eboue, and Toure.

**jimbo** · 18-05-2006

Yep, the game was far too big for the referee. This was a major show piece in the football calendar and he bottled everything.

The best part of the match was Henry's interview afterwards.

***Leee*** · 18-05-2006

Henry was bang on the money with his comments. The ref .... shocking. **** it, think about it and give the goal, leave Lehmann on and let the final pan out the way it could've.

did the ref borrow his linesmans Barca shirt for the night?

***AlexBellisBrown*** · 18-05-2006

The referre was fine in my opinion, I was a neutral last night. Leymann was sent off for fouling Eto. The referre played advantage and Barca scored. But he decided to call it back (Rightfully in my opinion) and send off Leymann, Come on guys, he grabbed his ankle!

**rolfw** · 18-05-2006

Don't think it is purely that incident which everyone is talking about, but regarding that, it could have gone either way and the referee chose to not play the advantage, if Barca had gone on to lose, their fans would have been moaning about that decision.

***Leee*** · 18-05-2006

how did he play advantage? The goal would've stood and that, IMO, was punishment enough even though technically he was possibly correct in what he actually did, he failed to let the game flow and actually imposed himself too much on the game.

My issue with the RED card is that Lehmann did not deny a goalsoring chance, so it was a foul not a professional foul.

Collina, for example, would've let the goal stand and may (or may not) have given a yellow to the 'keeper.

Henry was quite right in his summary of how much the central defenders got away with - the Mexican ponytail bloke clearly went through Henry yet no foul was given.

I say the team with 11 men won. Nothing more, nothing less.

And it's no coincidence that this ref won't be in Germany this summer

***Leee*** · 18-05-2006

this is funny though, just came across it:

**T_G** · 18-05-2006

Well, I have to agree with the neutrals point of view, I watched the game together with a German guy and we both agreed that the Lehman foul was a red card. Ref had no choice. Also, I don't think the rev was too much biased to any side.

Also noted by neutrals: As ALWAYS when the Arseanal lose, they whinge and blame everybody but themselves. The linesman, the ref, blablabla.
I did not hear anything like: "Yeah, Barca had one man more, and that made it difficult. We did our best but towards the end we were nacked. Of course, if our stupid keeper did not have one of his red mist moments, maybe we could have gotten something out of it later on". But noooooo, not from the honourably Henry "Houdini".

Whinging about Puyol, but what about all those tackles from that little t*** Cole? Forgot that as well...He might be a good player, but the difference between him and the other teams captain is that one went missing and choked as so many times befor where the other didn't...

Anyway, I think the better team won, and most neutrals think this as well.

**Salty25** · 18-05-2006

Originally Posted by T_G

Well, I have to agree with the neutrals point of view, I watched the game together with a German guy and we both agreed that the Lehman foul was a red card. Ref had no choice. Also, I don't think the rev was too much biased to any side.

Also noted by neutrals: As ALWAYS when the Arseanal lose, they whinge and blame everybody but themselves. The linesman, the ref, blablabla.
I did not hear anything like: "Yeah, Barca had one man more, and that made it difficult. We did our best but towards the end we were nacked. Of course, if our stupid keeper did not have one of his red mist moments, maybe we could have gotten something out of it later on". But noooooo, not from the honourably Henry "Houdini".

Whinging about Puyol, but what about all those tackles from that little t*** Cole? Forgot that as well...He might be a good player, but the difference between him and the other teams captain is that one went missing and the other one choked as so many times before...

Anyway, I think the better team won, and most neutrals think this as well.

Theres no doubt that the best team won, i dont think anyone could argue with that, and the Lehmann incident is down to a matter of opinion about what was best for the game. However, the majority of not just Arsenal fans, but also neutral, I think will argue that the ref was extremely naive and inept in much of his decision making. It would have been better to have a Dutch or Italian ref, at least they are better at telling when players are 'simulating'.

At the end of the day, Barca didnt need poor refereeing to help them, they had the talent to win it anyway. Its a shame both Henry and Ronaldinho has off night... I guess England, Germany, and Italy as well as the other favourites should take some hope from that. Can't believe Giuly didn't even make the reserves for France, apart from Larsson, he was the best player last night, and you could say the same for Victor Valdas (who went up in my previously low estimation of him).

**Salty25** · 18-05-2006

Now the ref has admitted he was harsh - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/foot...pe/4993994.stm

**jimbo** · 18-05-2006

Originally Posted by T_G

Anyway, I think the better team won, and most neutrals think this as well.

I don't agree with that at all. I'm not saying Arsenal are better but their team was not on show from the 18th minute onwards. So in fact we won't know which was the better team. It's not about what you do during the season, it's what you do in that one match.

As far as the sending off was concerned this is from the the referees own rules, laws and regulations under 'Powers and Duties':

(The referee) allows play to continue when the team against which an offence has been committed will benefit from such an advantage and penalises the original offence if the anticipated advantage does not ensue at that time

Even last night's ref has admitted he should have waited a couple of seconds. He would then have allowed the goal and given the keeper a yellow card.

**jimbo** · 19-05-2006

Obviously Septic Bloater is a member on here and read my last post.

**john_graydon** · 20-05-2006

Was watching this match in a bar in Puerto Rico last wed. I was the only one in the pub up for Arsenal. You might think you were in a pub full of Spanish but I wasnt..It was full of British. Whats the story I asked one guy after the match. He said everyone in the pub backed Barca...I said fair kop excuse the pun. I think the match was ruined with Lehmann sent off. Who knows.

**Salty25** · 20-05-2006

Originally Posted by jimbo

Obviously Septic Bloater is a member on here and read my last post.

But who? If I'm Bernie Ecclestone, Sepp has to be on here somewhere!

**T_G** · 20-05-2006

Henry And Wenger Should Follow Hauge Lead

Friday May 19 2006
By Philip Cornwall

The chorus of criticism of Terje Hauge grows louder, with Jurgen Klinsmann and Sepp Blatter being the latest to criticise the Norwegian for being too quick to blow his whistle at a pivotal moment in Paris on Wednesday.
But it's long past time for north London voices to quieten down - except, perhaps, for Tottenham voices, their owners clad in Barcelona shirts.
Alas, it needs repeating: Hauge hurt both sides by failing to award Barcelona the “goal” Ludovic Giuly scored and allowing Jens Lehmann to stay on.
It also needs repeating that Lehmann committed a mandatory red-card offence, which he had the good grace not to question so fas as I heard and have read.
And that Emmanuel Eboue should have been receiving his own red card rather than winning the free-kick from which Arsenal took the lead.
And that Samuel Eto'o's equaliser rightly stood.
I wrote on Wednesday morning of my admiration for Arsene Wenger and Thierry Henry and I'm glad that the latter is staying with Arsenal. But though he's a player worth paying to watch, a lot of the time he isn't worth listening to. His complaints got some cheers from some drunks in a pub at the time, but ring hollow to the sober.
Wenger's remarks about Samuel Eto'o being offside were off-beam, too, because no linesman in the world could fairly give that decision at full speed. Whatever the freeze-frame says, on the evidence available to the linesman he made the right call and only someone wearing an Arsenal shirt could have done otherwise.
I was generous to Henry on Wednesday night because his own booking was ludicrous, but his inability and that of his manager to see the bigger picture diminish both of them.
They are helped by some ludicrous media coverage, for example the front-page story in Thursday's Evening Standard, London's local paper that on this occasion became downright parochial.
Reporting that Hauge had joined in the criticism of his refereeing performance, Robert Mendick wrote: “His comments will incense Arsenal fans, who believe any chance of victory was snatched away the moment the goalkeeper was dismissed.”
But how many Arsenal fans, their team 1-0 up with 12 minutes left, felt that Lehmann's dismissal meant that “any chance of victory was snatched away the moment the goalkeeper was dismissed”? None. The Standard lets itself down with such nonsense.
I should declare an interest here. I spent three years working at the Standard, as one of the smallest cogs on the sports desk, before leaving by choice on good terms (I was there for a leaving drink only last week). I must add that Mendick, author of this fiction, doesn't appear to work for the sports desk now and certainly didn't when I worked there.
And I must record the words of the paper's chief sports correspondent, Ian Chadband (who probably wouldn't recognise me in the street): “The sad thing? The emptiness of his [Henry's] complaints. The key decision? Jens Lehmann's dismissal was fair: Arsenal were lucky thet Terje Hauge was too whistle happy to play advantage and let Ludovic Giuly's goal count; and if Eto'o was offside for his equaliser, then didn't Arsenal also go ahead from a goal won from Emmanuel Eboue's dive?”
That's fine, balanced sports journalism of a kind missing on the same paper's front page and in much of the blindly pro-Arsenal coverage elsewhere.
Let's join Hauge in admitting our mistakes. I was too willing to give Arsenal a free ride for their outbursts on Wednesday.
Henry and Wenger were speaking in the heat of the moment, of course. But they should have calmed down by now. It's their turn to admit they got it wrong, ideally at the press conference when Henry signs his new deal.

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