Tag Archives: Newcastle

Here’s why the FA was WRONG not to punish Arteta…

So, apparently, Mikel Arteta, the darling of the British media and punditocracy, has escaped any sanction for his scathing post-match diatribe after the wholly deserved loss to Newcastle, the one in which he called VAR’s refusal to chalk off Anthony Gordon’s game-winning goal “embarrassing and a disgrace”. Those comments led to his rightly being charged with breaking Rule E3.1, which includes bringing the game into disrepute. However, the FA quailed, and Arteta escapes unscathed. If the FA doesn’t crack on this kind of egregious misbehaviour, it will only fester and worsen.

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UCL draw. That’s it. That’s the title of this post.

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At long last, we know which clubs have finished second and are eligible to be drawn against us in the Champions League knockout stage. While the draw won’t happen until Monday, 12 December, it’s not too early to size up the potential opposition. For ourselves, we’re among the younger squads to progress, and, what’s more, we’re short on experience at this level. I hope it’s not too immodest to suggest that I’d like to see us get a draw as favourable as we got from the group stage…

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What the hell is wrong with Raya? Ramsdale would like a word…

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Say what you will about the ball going out of bounds or Joelinton cradling said ball between both arms before shoving Gabriel to the ground before said ball falling to Anthony Gordon who scored from an offside position. Any one of those should have been enough to disallow the goal, nevermind all four of them at once. And yet. All of that would have been water under a bridge had Raya, our £28m signing (er, loan), dealt with Willock’s cross as one might expect any keeper at this level would have.

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Is this all you can conjure, Saruman?

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Now, at this point, I don’t know if “Saruman” is a reference to Newcastle, the PGMOL, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, or Stuart Attwell, or to some unholy conglomeration of all them and then some. We went into St. James’ Park know that this would be one of our most-difficult fixtures, and our hosts needed a goal so dodgy that there were three VAR checks, not to mention a player who should have been sent off for any number of bookable if not straight-red offenses, to escape. On balance, I’ll take it.

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Balls out of bounds and forearm shivers and uncalled fouls, oh my!

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Well, that was a feisty, hot mess. Whether it was Havertz’s clumsy sideline tackle, Guimarães’s hot-headed response to that tackle and then the forearm shiver to Jorginho’s head, this one offered plenty of drama. When Joe Willock recovered a ball that had pretty clearly rolled out of bounds and sent in a cross, it felt like VAR would get at least one of three chances correct: the ball out was out of bounds, Gabriel was fouled, or Gordon scored from an offside position. Nope. This was a frustrating loss, to say the least. Well, let’s get down to the poll to rate the lads. We’ll take a deeper dive later…

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