Unlucky Arsenal robbed again

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Arsenal were far from convincing in their 0-0 draw with Sunderland yesterday afternoon. Then again, you don’t always need to be at your best to win football games, as we’ve shown a few times this season and many other teams have shown before. It sure helps though.
But then, so does fair refereeing, and once again in recent months the key decisions have gone against us. After seeing Fergie get himself in trouble over his comments after the Chelsea match, Wenger wisely kept his mouth shut about the performance of the officials today. And yet, people call him ‘Whinger’, and repeatedly ignore Fergie’s outbursts.
First Andrey Arshavin was denied an obvious penalty after being pushed over by Titus Bramble. Then with five minutes to go, he was wrongly flagged offside. The fact that Saha’s mile-offside goal was allowed at the Emirates last month, but this clearly onside one was chalked out shows there’s something dodgy going on here.
Still, as that game with Everton showed, you can still win games even when the refs screw you over. So as much as we were cheated by the officials today, don’t we have the right to feel a little cheated by our players too?
After Chelsea handed us a massive boost the other night, I would’ve liked to see more from the players early on today, but it took them a while to get going. We had four very important players out (that doesn’t even include season-long absentee Thomas Vermaelen), but I still feel that in Arshavin, Nasri and Wilshere we had enough match-winners there so weren’t quite giving it their all. Then again, with Diaby and Denilson pulling the strings behind them, you can’t expect too much.
Most teams couldn’t handle the kind of injuries we have, but at the same time most teams don’t have the same kind of bad luck in that department, so be worried if we see a lot of Diaby and Denilson starting games together in the title run-in.
For now, though, it’s not the end of the world. A win would obviously have been nice, but given the circumstances it’s not that surprising, and as long as United don’t win tomorrow (which I don’t think they will) then we’ll probably get away with it.