Blackburn 2 (Dunn 44, Samba 68) Arsenal 1 (Van Persie 13)
(Premiership)

If I were in Arsene Wenger’s shoes this morning, I’d have called the players in, sat them down in front of a big screen, and played them Sam Allardyce’s post-match interview. And once it was finished, I’d have played it again. And again. And again.

Looking at his smug face, gloating at the success of his predictable tactics, should drive the message home to those who failed to put in the required effort yesterday – if you play one of his sides, you have to be up for a battle. Cruise around the pitch, duck out of the physical contests, and you will be beaten. Stand up to the challenge, and your superior ability should shine through.

And for goodness sake, give your goalkeeper a little protection. If three opponents are crowding him, get in amongst them and disrupt them right back. It isn’t rocket science, people.

But apparently, to some of these players, it is. Traore, given an opportunity to prove his worth at left back, shirked every opportunity to drive forward. Vela missed a sitter early on then vanished. Diaby had another of his lazy days.

You can’t afford that against Blackburn. In fact, you can’t afford that against many teams – go away from home in the Premiership and you will face a challenge – it doesn’t matter who you’re playing, they won’t make it easy. If they work harder than we do, any technical advantage is cancelled out.

Of course there are extenuating circumstances – we lost Song, Rosicky, Clichy, Bendtner and Denilson on top of our existing absentees. But while a drop in quality is understandable, a decline in effort is baffling – the thing with injuries is it gives the squad a chance to shine. They not only failed to take it, they didn’t seem that bothered.

We have one game left this season, and third place is still not secure. A draw against Fulham is all we need, and while that might seem a foregone conclusion, so would some of the other games we’ve chucked away in recent times. We fought so hard to be in the title race this season, and the stark contrast in fortunes as soon as that drive slipped away shows just how little we can afford to let up. A small drop in work rate and the points dry up.

Fabianski has taken the flak this morning, and he was indeed at fault for the second goal – he was bustled but he and the rest of the defence need to be stronger than that. But I’m more annoyed with certain other members of the team – the Pole worked hard and made some fine saves under pressure. Some of the rest ambled around as if the game didn’t matter.

It did matter, to the fans who will be here long after they’ve departed. It will always matter against Sam Allardyce, and if they never want to see his smug face again, they’d better buck their ideas up.

Reading the newspapers, listening to Five Live, and watching Arseblogger get more and more irate by the Soccer Saturday coverage of the Ramsey incident, it strikes me that the written and spoken press are completely missing the crux of the issue.

• Shawcross did not mean to break Ramsey’s leg, but that is not the point. 

• Gallas put in a poor challenge on Davies, Vieira and Lauren used to put in hard challenges, and Arsenal are no angels, but that is not the point.

• Wenger was emotional after the game, but that is not the point.

• Shawcross cried, but that is not the point.

• The Stoke fans contained some of the absolute lowest of the low, but that is not the point.

• Ramsey was quick, but that is not the point.

• Shawcross has injured before, has broken legs before, but that is not the point.

• Ramsey has suffered a dreadful setback, and while that deserves more of the focus than any of the above, it is in some ways, also not the point.

No, the point is that we have cultivated a culture in English football in which weaker sides can do more than harry and press, they can close the gap using methods other than the legal approach of working harder, being better organised and coming off the pitch exhausted.

In addition to all of that, it has become accepted to put in sly tackles, flail elbows, and deliberately foul to put your superior opponent off the game. It is even accepted to come out before the match and declare this as your intention. Instead of applauding the workrate of the strugglers, the pundits snigger at the late challenges, the full blooded swipes, irrespective of the danger they cause.

No other country allows this to happen. Wild tackles are punished no matter what the consequences, but they only come into focus here if they result in a serious injury. Even then, they are defended – how else can the smaller team compete, they ask? The answer is simple – by playing football better than us. The clue’s in the name of the game, you morons.

I get it, you get it, the blogs linked to the right get it. So why do 90% of those paid to analyse the game miss what is the real story here?

It is nearly three years since Arsene Wenger first coined the term ‘Sky Sports Justice’ following the Carling Cup final with Chelsea. That day, in case you’ve forgotten, Adebayor was sent off for slapping Wayne Bridge, when that was in fact Eboue’s action. The press machine went into overdrive, focusing heavily on the ‘brawl’, and Eboue in particular, and as a result both clubs were disproportionately fined, with Eboue banned (Adebayor’s ban was not rescinded). Drogba, meanwhile, slapped Cesc away from the main cluster of players, but Sky refused to show it in their coverage, and no charge was brought. It was one of the clearest cases of media-driven action (and lack of) we’ve seen.

Since then, it has become worrying prevalent. We are now in the age of 24 hour news coverage, Sky Sports News running stories on a loop while the written press pick their targets, going after them online and each morning. Phone-ins give voices to those who read the Sun’s agenda-filled stories and wish to emphasise and embellish them, and suddenly fiction becomes fact. A minor incident becomes the disgrace of the century, and an individual finds himself the victim of a bloodthirsty witchhunt. It is all rather unedifying.

Moreover, it is a tough subject for a manager to broach – challenging the power that the media have over the football authorities can and will turn them against you, which only increases the focus on those incidents in which your players could be seen to be in the wrong. For example, any Arsenal fan can tell you that the Daily Mail has become the anti-Arsenal rag, with a constant stream of stories mocking everything that goes on at the Emirates, irrespective of whether there is any shred of truth in the words they print. With every story they twist reality to make us seem like the bad guys.

That isn’t a complaint, incidentally – I’m sure fans of other clubs can find columnists and even entire papers that continually paint them in a bad light. Much like political affiliation, they like to appeal to a subset of the country’s readership by taking a consistent line on the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’. They pick their targets, and stick to them. If their numbers dwindle, they switch. It is classic marketing, but so many are gullible enough to soak in every last word.

Sometimes they even announce their change – witness the Sun’s recent political declaration of support for the Conservative party over Labour, a complete about turn after a decade of allegiance. Now every story comes from the opposite angle. Do all the columnists and reporters back the switch? Of course not – they’re just doing their job. It is the same in sport.

If the media are effectively only doing their job, the same cannot be said of the authorities who should be strong enough to act independently of public furore.

First, of course, we had the Eduardo farce. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I believe it was a dive and I would like to see divers punished. But, and this is a big but, UEFA charged him and found him guilty based entirely on the media outrage sparked by the Scottish FA. FIFA’s rule is clear – if there is any contact it cannot be deemed a dive. UEFA were attempting to pacify the outcry with a scapegoat, but had to back down when they realised the punishment would never stick, and that they were only giving themselves a massive headache going forward.

Had the press not focused on the dive, the charge would never even have been brought. Was FC Zurich’s Alphonse hauled before judge and jury for his dive against Real Madrid on the first day of the group stage? Of course not. It was the first in a string of examples that exposed UEFA’s hypocrisy.

More recently, we had Henry’s handball. More instinctive than a dive, it was blown out of all proportion because of the magnitude of the event, and the timing. No other handball incident (Scharner and Defoe, to name two who transgressed in the weeks after the furore) even got a mention. The hypocrisy is staggering, yet once against the press triumphed, Henry today being forced to attend a disciplinary hearing.

Not only did he face sanction, but he was found guilty before the trial. Sepp Blatter said:

“This is a matter of the disciplinary committee but it was blatant unfair playing and was shown all around the world, but I don’t know what the outcome will be.”

Henry escaped a ban, but it was made abundantly clear that it was due only to a lack of legal options. You can be sure that had laws not been set firmly in stone, FIFA would have found a way to suspend him, effectively giving the press carte blanche to vilify individuals and get them taken to task for offences no worse than we see week in week out.

Worrying times, indeed. But all it takes to fix this problem is for FIFA and UEFA to be strong and communicate. Resist the hype machine, and explain clearly why fair decisions are taken.

But instead, they pander, and show themselves up as weak-minded in the process, presenting the media with an opportunity to influence by carefully selected stories to fit their agendas. They no longer report the news, they create it.

Am I the only one despairing at the notion that Samir Nasri was ever likely to pick up a three match ban for stepping on Richard Garcia’s foot on Saturday? The suggestion that it constituted violent conduct in any way would have been laughable were it not for the fact that the media backlash could have made a ridiculous situation a reality.

Nasri walked over Garcia’s foot. It was stupid, petulant and designed to rile. Just like goading an opponent, squaring up to them, or doing that stupid rutting thing we see too often, it was petulant, childish, and deserved a yellow card, as all of those offences do.

Violent it most certainly was not. Had Nasri raised his foot to knee height and brought it crashing down, then it would have been, but he didn’t. That his ‘escape’ of a three match ban is even newsworthy shows just how skewed the disciplinary priorities are in this country.

If an opponent is flying past you, and you react by cynically and deliberately hacking them to the ground, you get a yellow card. Yet surely that is far worse (and far more violent) than some of these incidents. To ban Nasri would have been equivalent to the pathetic suspension Aliadiere picked up for flicking Mascherano’s face last year. Stupidity dropped to a new level that day.

For the record, I also agree with the decision not to ban Barmby for his push to Nasri’s face in the subsequent melee. I fail to see why the authorities don’t differentiate between that innocuous action, and those the ‘raised hands’ rule was brought in for – punches and slaps. There is clearly a varying level of violence going on, yet the punishments don’t reflect that.

I remember years ago (97/98 season, since you asked), Alan Shearer, then England captain, viciously roundhouse kicked Neil Lennon in the head while he lay prone on the ground. Despite condemnation for a plainly violent act, he was banned for just three matches. If you lightly push an opponent in the face, and they collapse in a dramatic heap, you get the same spell on the sidelines. How is that justice?

For me, the three match ban, given for an entire scale of offences, has long been an overly simplistic system. In a way, I can see why it exists – a sliding scale of suspensions would give managers, fans, and the media chance to compare unfavourably, and suggest that X got off lightly compared to Y.

But right now, the system makes no sense. The inflexibility means that idiocy, violent conduct, or even doing a Martin Taylor get punished as equivalent offences, which they plainly are not.

On a sliding scale, it could be argued that a one match ban for Nasri would be fair. Or a six match ban for the sort of leg breaking challenges we still see. To be forced in a ‘three match ban or nothing’ decision fails to take into account that a completely different punishment may be justified.

But then, when did discipline at the FA ever make sense?

One thing about not blogging for a week is you can sit back and watch the hysterical reactions going on in the world of football without feeling like you have to dive in and add your voice. It has been one of those weeks.

First we had the curse of the international break rear its ugly head again, in the form of injuries to Van Persie and Gibbs. The timing of the former is painful because he was on such a hot streak, and with important games coming up it helps to have the players likely to strike fear into the opponents. For the latter, it is also a blow, but for different reasons – with Clichy out, Gibbs had a great chance to stake his claim for a regular first team spot. Ask Fabianski how a mistimed injury can drop you down the pecking order.

But in both cases, panic spread like wildfire, only for subsequent reports to confirm that the injuries were not as bad as initially feared. Which, frankly, made some of the outlandish statements made in the interim seem all the more foolhardy. As soon as the Dutchman collapsed on the turf, our season was being written off, a bizarre conclusion given how many goalscorers we have. As it turns out, Gibbs might be fit in just over a week, with Van Persie returning just after Christmas. It isn’t ideal, but it isn’t a crisis either.

If you were to make me select positions to lose players to injury, I’d plump for strikers and left backs, as we have the cover. Just wrap Gallas and Vermaelen up in cotton wool and we’ll be fine.

And then we have the internationals. Fans and the media do like to get overboard from time to time, don’t they? We had Eduardo, and now we have ‘Handball-Gate’, the inevitable title of last night’s incident. For those who don’t know, you must be living under a rock, but essentially Henry instinctively (perhaps) handled the ball, crossed for Gallas, who scored to put France into the World Cup.

And that’s about it. Was it a clear handball? Yes. Was it deliberate? That depends largely on whether you consider instinct to be the same thing. Should the goal have stood? Absolutely not.

But it was one of a million incidents that referees and linesmen miss. Yes, somehow, this has got the footballing public into such a flurry that we have fans calling in to Sky to get the match replayed, and beyond that, Kevin Kilbane and Liam Brady are demanding the match to be null and void.

Some go even further – one caller on Sky Sports was comparing Henry’s actions with the business world, where fraud can land you in jail. Has the world gone mad? Even the Irish Justice Minister waded in:

“They probably won’t grant it as we are minnows in world football but let’s put them on the spot. Otherwise, if that result remains, it reinforces the view that if you cheat, you will win.”

Kilbane said:

“Well, I’d like to think it would be replayed and I think everyone in the squad would like it replayed.”

What possible grounds are there for replaying the game? Imagine the precedent – suddenly every team that loses to a goal that shouldn’t have stood because of a handball or a foul could demand the same. Or to take it further, maybe a result is canned because a throw in was awarded the wrong way, leading to the winning goal. After all, the argument here is that Henry deliberately cheated – is appealing for a throw you know isn’t yours any different?

It is beyond ridiculous. Yes, it is a harsh way to go out, but it is hardly new. I remember South Korea knocking Italy out in 2002 thanks to a series of horrendous refereeing decisions. Australia lost to Italy in 2006 to a penalty that wasn’t. Did anyone demand a replay then? Of course not.

Get a fucking grip.

Disclaimer – please don’t think this is an anti-Irish rant. Strangely enough, most of the hysterical reactions have come from the English media and English fans. Most Irish I’ve seen mention the incident are understandably pissed off but at the same time accept that’s how football is sometimes. Check out an excellent post by Arseblogger (who is Irish) for evidence of rationality.