By CARL ELDRIDGE Roll up, roll up, read all about it. This morning’s papers offer a decent smattering of Arsenal stories ranging from the club’s appeal on the Eduardo divegate scandal to Arsene Wenger being hit with an FA warning. The Sun kicks off by telling us that the Gunners have confirmed they will appeal against Eduardo’s ban for diving.
As we know, the Croatian striker was slapped with a two-match suspension by UEFA for “deceiving the referee” during the Champions League play-off match against Celtic and now Arsenal have now issued a ‘strongly-worded’ statement indicating their intention not to let the matter rest.
It reads: “The club is in receipt of UEFA’s reasoned decision in relation to the charge against Eduardo. We strongly believe that the decision taken is deeply flawed and not based on any forensic review of the video evidence available. There are obvious errors and inconsistencies in UEFA’s judgment and we intend to appeal.”
Meanwhile.the same paper informs us that AW has been censured by the FA for the Old Trafford bottle-kicking moment even though he received an apology from Premier League referee chiefs. An FA letter is on its way to the Arsenal boss “reminding him of his responsibilities” after the incident last Saturday. He was the victim you imbeciles!
Elsewhere in the redtop, Steven Howard highlights just how incompetent UEFA have been shown to be with what he calls the ‘Eduardo fiasco’.
He writes: “UEFA have made themselves look complete mugs.The most baffling aspect of it all is they now claim they will NOT be using the Eduardo case to spearhead an anti-diving programme. In fact, they continue to remain highly sceptical of the use of video evidence – because they are concerned it will undermine the authority of referees! Yet what did they do in the Eduardo case?
“Despite the referee of the Arsenal-Celtic match standing by his original decision to award a penalty, UEFA ignored this and, instead, went on the advice of the official match observer.”
The Mirror tells us that Eduardo is considering making a personal appearance to try to clear his name and adds that Arsenal have three days to submit their appeal and may even look to see whether it is possible for Eduardo to attend the UEFA hearing, although he is away with Croatia on international duty until Thursday.
The Daily Mail reports that Manchester United have branded a section of their fans ‘disgusting’ for their continued verbal abuse of AW and want to stamp it out. We all know the particular chant that is so offensive and they have as much chance of stopping it as I have playing left-back in the Carling Cup match against WBA. Right-back maybe. Yet United spokesman Philip Townsend said: ‘We’ve gone on the record several times about this disgusting chant. We don’t condone it and have appealed to fans in the past – through supporters’ groups, the matchday programme and MUTV, but to no avail. There are many chants that opposing fans find objectionable, and this is certainly one to which all decent supporters should object.’