Aaron Ramsdale was as furious with the refereeing as Arsenal fans after Stuart Atwell and his Stockley Park cohorts conspired to rob the Gunners of points from their game on New Year’s Day.

Sometimes, I moan about referees and it is nothing but sour grapes.

Sadly, a lot of the time it is because they have made decisions that have influenced the outcome of a match.

Rarely do we see that evidenced so clearly as we did against Manchester City at the Emirates.

From not giving Arsenal fouls at all (until 80 minutes Arsenal only had three free kicks the whole game), booking Arsenal players for complaining about the few fouls they got when they actually got one, to ignoring foul throws, if someone wanted to write a fiction about a corrupt organisation, the seeds were all here in this game.

Not a foul pic.twitter.com/yrTqJgeV89

— Daily Cannon (@DailyCannon) January 1, 2022

Martinelli scores if he doesn't have to run around the ref to get to the ball pic.twitter.com/0RSpJFl0QM

— Des Moines Gooners (@DSM_Gooners) January 1, 2022

Pundits across the globe couldn’t understand why Stuart Atwell was called to the monitor for Bernardo Silva’s dive but wasn’t for Ederson’s foul on Martin Odegaard in the first half.

Neither can Aaron Ramsdale, who spoke to the media after the final whistle.

“Both penalties, I don’t know why the ref is told to see one and not the other,” Ramsdale said.

“It is there for a reason, go and use it. It is the inconsistency. The whole point is to help the game out, in real time it didn’t look like one and slow it down on a screen and it is given.”

Amazing how composed Ramsdale is in the wake of that match. Very articulate, and does a good job of being relatively objective pic.twitter.com/dZCkvKPR7W

— Adam (ThreeFiveHoHoHo) (@ThreeFiveWho) January 1, 2022

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