It was a great match between Manchester United and Arsenal yesterday, in which Arsenal took a first half lead, but United came back in the second half with a penalty and an own goal to nick the result.

There were a couple of incidences which bothered me.  Firstly where on earth did the referee find 5 minutes of added on time at the end of the match from?  Surely such a long amount of added on time should be reserved for a serious injury, severe time wasting or some kind of players bust up.  There were almost no stoppages in the game last night, I think the officials need to be held accountable for time added on.  They can’t just base the the time on how heated the game is, or how much chance one team has of coming back.

This brings me to the second point; in the final seconds of the 5th minute of time added on Van Persie scored a would be equalizer only to have it chalked off because Gallas had been offside when he nodded the ball down.

Meanwhile Wenger was celebrating the goal on the sidelines only to realize it wasn’t going to count, he then took his frustrations out on a water bottle, kicking it down the sidelines.  This is when 5 minutes of absolute foolishness began.  Keeping in mind that time was already up and the match was one kick of the ball away from the final whistle, the 4th official decided to call the referee over and report the Wenger water bottle kicking.  They then discussed the situation for a while and decided to send Wenger to the stands, where the Arsenal boss had to walk into a sea of Old Trafford faithful all booing, jeering and making certain gestures.

As if this walk of shame was not enough, the officials then decided he was not far enough back from the pitch and would need to come back down and instead leave the field completely.  As a United fan I just about fell off the couch laughing, but I can imagine there are quite a few irate Gunners fans out there, seeing their manager treated in such a manner.

Wenger had not even got off the field before the final whistle came.  The officials should be thoroughly ashamed of the way the game end, and the way they handled Wenger’s understandable water bottle incident.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 2:22 am and is filed under Manager Talk, Matches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.