Since Arsenal lost to Liverpool on Tuesday night, there have been plenty of post-mortems being carried out by various members of the Gunners squad. Kolo Toure and Arsene Wenger both bemoaned the penalty decision which led to the home team’s third goal, while Gael Clichy thought the team had to take a hard look at itself for not holding on at 2-2 on the night.
Now Sky Sports report that ice cream-loving Alexander Hleb has bemoaned a number of refereeing decisions in recent weeks which has cost his team dear. Has the winger swapped his tutti frutti cornetto with some sour grapes or do the following comments make sense?
“The Premier League is a very tough competition. Yes, the game is fast and beautiful, but there are also quite a lot of bad tackles and crudeness, and recently also monstrous refereeing mistakes.
“Chelsea scored a goal against us from an obvious offside position but the referee allowed it. And we scored a goal which was very important for us but it was disallowed for a non-existent offside.”
“There are quite a lot of bone-breaking players here,” Hleb continued. “English referees are very liberal to them. They do it because they know there will be no real punishment.
“Eduardo is out for a year, maybe more. His future is under a question mark. The guy who did it was only disqualified for three games. Is it an adequate punishment?”
We’ve certainly been here before with regard to the latter comments, with Arsenal generally starting to feel as though Eduardo’s horrific injury marked the beginning of the end of their season. Hleb is misguided to think that officials decision have played a key role in Arsenal’s potless season, although you can understand the frustration that the Gunners must be feeling right now.