EmmanuelEboue
The Burning Question: Do referees favour the big four?
Sunday, December 7th, 2008 | BWFC People, Gary Cahill, Jlloyd Samuel | 3 Comments
Are match officials biased towards Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal?
Bolton Wanderers have now lost all four matches against the big four teams in the Premier League this season.
Bolton Wanderers Hall of Shame #3: The Online Gooner
Friday, September 26th, 2008 | BWFC People, Danny Shittu, Kevin Davies | No Comments
Some Arsenal fans have very short memories…
Bolton Wanderers haven’t always played ugly football. Once upon a time, in the days when I first started following the club, we played brilliant, exhilarating, attacking football.
Then we got in to the Premier League and continued trying to play brilliant attacking football. Our reward? Two relegations, the second of which nearly led to financial ruin.
So we learnt to play a different way because it was the only way to survive, and it worked… we’ve now been in the Premier League for eight uninterrupted seasons, something that was unthinkable 15 years ago.
At some point in the future this will all change again, because that’s what happens in football. Mark my words: in the future the beautiful game will return to Bolton Wanderers, whether it’s in this league or another one.
When it does, it’s likely we’ll come up against teams whose only chance of beating us will be by bullying us and trying to put us off our game.
When that happens I hope we don’t take the moral high ground with those clubs. I hope that instead of whinging about ‘not getting enough protection from referees’, we remember that once upon a time we used to do exactly the same thing.
Unfortunately, Arsenal fans have been sitting on their ‘we play proper football’ moral high ground for so long that they’ve forgotten they once played crap football too, and that everyone hated them for it because it brought them success.
More importantly, they’ve forgotten that one day Arsene Wenger will no longer be their manager, and that sooner or later they will play negative football again.
Gael Clichy gets ready for his next match against Bolton Wanderers. Picture from mimiyaw, some rights reserved.
In an article headlined ‘Bolton F****** Wanderers’ (an exclusive! no less), Arsenal fanzine The Online Gooner rips in to Bolton Wanderers for ‘kicking Arsenal off the park.’ It’s worth reading all the way through for a laugh (the opening jibe about Danny Shittu must have taken him ages think up), but here are the highlights of author Mark Halfpenny’s gripes:
1. The north of England is chilly (the game was played in glorious sunshine).
2. Kevin Davies‘ tackle on Gael Clichy (who got a bruised shin and is expected to be back in the Arsenal line-up again this Saturday) was just as bad as Martin Taylor’s last season on Eduardo (who suffered a broken leg that has kept him out for months).
3. Setanta’s summariser Craig Burley defended Davies’ tackle because all TV pundits hate Arsenal (Burley also defended Emmanuel Eboue’s offside goal because Arsenal ‘deserved to score’).
4. Fifa, Uefa and the FA (hell, why not get the United Nations involved too?) should crack down on Bolton for their renowned foul play (they never bothered to crack down on Dennis Bergkamp).
5. If the so-called 39th game ever took place, people in New York and Bangkok would not want to watch Bolton Wanderers (oh no, how will I sleep tonight knowing that some Malaysian bloke who’s never been to Bolton in his life doesn’t want to buy a Wanderers shirt? How embarrassing!)
I can only assume that when ‘proper football’ is a thing of the past once more at Arsenal, Mark Halfpenny and every other Arsenal fan who has slated ‘Bolton F****** Wanderers’ style of play over the last few years will be burning their red shirts, tearing up their season tickets and vowing never to attend an Arsenal match ever again (not that that will matter of course, with all their fans in Shanghai to make up the numbers).
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