Mark Clattenburg has said that BOTH Tottenham’s goals should NOT have stood.
Mark Clattenburg must be just about the only person on the planet who isn’t an Arsenal fan that’s talking about Eric Dier’s goal.
- Trained Tottenham cheats & 9 other delights from Arsenal’s Spurs spanking
- Aubameyang and Torreira shine in impressive comeback victory: Player ratings vs Spurs
All over Twitter Arsenal fans were calling for the goal to be disallowed for offside. Not only did it stand, Sky Sports never once even looked at the goal to see if there was a problem. This is particularly odd because there is nothing Sky Sports love more than creating controversy around every goal.
Spurs’ second came, of course, by way of Son’s dive. Pundits, especially Jamie Redknapp, tried desperately to legitimise Spurs’ cheating, even going so far as to gaslight Arsenal fans by telling them what they saw (no contact) was not what happened.
“Mike Dean should not have allowed either of Tottenham’s goals,” Clattenburg writes in Monday’s Daily Mail. “Eric Dier was just offside when Christian Eriksen whipped over the free-kick for 1-1.
All of Spurs players look offsides too in Dier's goal.
Obviously. pic.twitter.com/olM8kNQt4F
— ♡rsenal (@invinciblog) December 2, 2018
“And Son Heung-min dived for Spurs’ penalty. Rob Holding lunged into a tackle but made no contact with Son.
"We've seen it five or six times and still can't see the contact."
Was that a penalty? Or did Son make the most of it?#ARSTOT: https://t.co/dB0SGrvJYf pic.twitter.com/ODmsdwHQ9k
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) December 2, 2018
“But Dean deserves credit for spotting Jan Vertonghen’s handball for Arsenal’s penalty — and rightly sent him off for a foul on Alexandre Lacazette.”
Aa usual, Dean will face no repercussions for another poor performance in which he got some major decisions wrong.
Thankfully, he’s now 50 and should be thinking about retiring in the next couple of seasons. At present, he referees around one in five Arsenal v Spurs games.
Keith Hackett, meanwhile, writing in the Daily Telegraph, said, “On first view, I thought it was a penalty, as did Mike. Holding slides in front of his opponent and appears to catch him. Mike was excellently positioned, took his time and pointed to the spot.
“However, television replays showed Holding did not touch Son, with the Tottenham forward going to ground far too easily.”
That all sounds perfectly reasonable. Then he adds, and I swear I am not making this up, “But what makes this decision so difficult is that you could argue it is still a penalty, even though no contact has been made. Law 12 states that a direct free-kick is awarded if a player makes a challenge “considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force”.
Holding’s tackle was daft, but it was not careless, reckless or using excessive force as they are meant in the rules of the game and Hackett knows it. He tries to explain, “Holding’s challenge was desperate and, as a result, careless. He made no contact because Son took evasive action rather than because he took any care to avoid his opponent.”
But we all know this is total bull. Son did not ‘take evasive action’. He dived. He was not trying to avoid Holding, he WANTED to be caught by the Arsenal defender. Holding, therefore, did not ’cause’ Son to go down, he did that all by himself.
- Trained Tottenham cheats & 9 other delights from Arsenal’s Spurs spanking
- Aubameyang and Torreira shine in impressive comeback victory: Player ratings vs Spurs
The definition of ‘careless’ in the rules is to protect players from dangerous tackles, not daft ones. By Hackett’s logic, any player sliding in to block the ball that misses both ball and man is a free-kick.
Idiot.