Filed under: Arsenal, Champions League, Premier League, Football
There is no-one quite like Arsene Wenger when it comes to a war of words and now the Arsenal manager has decided to take on Uefa over the Robin van Persie red card fiasco in Barcelona.The Frenchman, along with fellow countryman Samir Nasri, responded to improper conduct charges following an angry confrontation with referee Massimo Busacca after Barcelona's 4-3 aggregate Champions League victory with some improper conduct accusations of his own.
Not only did he brand Europe's governing body 'arrogant dictators' but he also declared that they, not he, needed to apologise for the events that followed van Persie being shown a second yellow card for having a post-whistle shot with the score on the night 1-1 and therefore 3-2 in Arsenal's favour.
"I deny completely any charge," he said. "It is a shame the referee took the decision to send van Persie off. It was wrong. The first game was a fantastic advert for football and the second game has been destroyed. The sending off killed the game.
"A bit more humility would do Uefa some good. To apologise for what happened would be much better than charge people who have done nothing wrong. It's not to me they must apologise. They do not punish me. It's Arsenal that has been punished.
"When you have a football game of that stature, you cannot come out with decisions like that and show a lot of arrogance on top of that. We can all understand that we can make wrong decisions, but after that it becomes dictatorship. It's not any more common sense."
Sensational stuff but was van Persie actually as innocent as his expression at the time and his manager's subsequent wrath suggested?
Ask Robbie Savage, the Derby captain who also has a weekly column in the Daily Mirror. The former Wales midfielder was never good enough to grace the Champions League but can spot things on the pitch that might escape others' gaze.
"His red card was harsh, but by the letter of the law it WAS a red card," he wrote. "Van Persie had already attracted the referee's attention by getting involved in verbals with the Barcelona defenders when Arsenal played on despite an opponent being on the ground. Then he was rightly yellow-carded for shoving Daniel Alves in the face.
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"That alone could have been a red card and, at that point, Van Persie should have cut his losses and been on his best behaviour. With 150 yellow cards to my name and only one red, I'm a bit of an expert on how to do that.
"Instead... well, you all saw what happened.
"Only Van Persie knows whether he heard or didn't hear the whistle, but he didn't seem to have any trouble hearing it at other stages of the game. And the shot which got him sent off was with his right foot - something he very rarely does."
Arsenal fans then had to suffer the sight of rivals Tottenham reaching the quarter finals by squeezing out AC Milan with a 0-0 draw at White Hart Lane the following night.
But that game also featured a player who had a shot after the whistle had gone - Peter Crouch. Mark Gonnella, Arsenal's director of communications, certainly noticed it and Tweeted: "Crouch shot after whistle went - yellow card surely".
Yet he wasn't, further adding to the Gunners' sense of injustice.
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