This may be a long rant, but I watched Arteta’s postmatch interview and he was (rightfully) savage at the end.

He was asked given the circumstances, Arteta and the players could take some real belief in what they we able to achieve. He replied along the lines of, it’s incredible how we reacted, but he could not be happy because he wants to be involved in a high quality game that can be enjoyed and can be spoken about “in the proper way and we are not talking about that.”

Then ended, “It’s clear, you haven’t asked me one single tactical question.”

The fact they were asking him his thoughts on all the controversy means nobody got to enjoy a high quality/high stakes game, because it was once again ruined by poor officiating.

How can everyone go from, the refs need some common sense in situations like those, for Rice’s 2nd yellow one week, then, Trossard needs to do better, he should know you will get punished for that, the next. Assuming it’s for the kick/clearance and not the tackle, it happens in such a split second and then you’re expecting him to pull out as soon as the whistle blows. There’s a reason someone invented a table saw that shuts off on human contact. We’re not that fucking quick.

It’s annoying how much people squirm and twist to excuse one player and not another, like Doku. Jesus got a yellow for delaying a restart as well.

What about Haaland? Not a single yellow despite throwing a ball at the head of an opposing player or for the unnecessary unsportsman-like barge into a player off the restart. When City do it, they’re just passionate. If Arsenal do it, they’re overreacting, they should sit down until they’ve actually won a trophy. Here’s a yellow card. It’ll brighten up the place. You know what, two would brighten things up even more! Ohh whoops. Yikes… my mistake. I guess that’s red now.

In our game against City last season, although Howard admitted Oliver got it wrong, Oliver apparently didn’t want to card Kovacic since he didn’t want to have a negative impact on the game. Just fuck right off. Are you there to officiate the rules of the game as your job as a referee or decide when the rules apply dependent on how you feel?

I know the officiating is abysmal for a lot of teams and you can point to any number of reasons why that is. I’m just fucken annoyed by it enough I needed to rant and get it off my chest.

I also want to mention Silva mentioning Arsenal using the “dark arts” is fucking rich coming from this City team.

I could rant about a lot of things, but I’m going to end it here.