What, you think Oliver is capable of making judgment calls? Intent only matters when it’s a City player in this fixture.

His explosiveness when it comes to interceptions and tackles were his star power when he first arrived. I hope he can continue to do it in future, though hopefully not because we’re a man down (again).

Oh for sure. But the match engine will automatically ask you if you want to change to defensive, and all I’m saying is that there’s a good reason for that.

What a battlecry. We should shout it as we storm PGMOL headquarters in Dubai.

? Trossard is challenging for the header, bumps Silva in the air. Foul, no problem. Yellow? Harsh. Second yellow? Extremely harsh.

Don’t talk to me about what anyone deserves. Where are Doku’s card for similarly delaying the restart or Haaland’s for violent play at the end?

That actually seems to be somewhat contentious. At the time the commentators said it was for delaying the restart. Afterwards, pundits said that they’d heard it was for the challenge on Silva.

Putting Arsenal bias hat on I assume they’re just trying to figure out which reason will hold more water and get them in less trouble.

I would love for the club to lodge a complaint with the PL, we can afford the £30k fine

Here’s the thing. There’s a reason why, in FM, when you get a red card, the tactics automatically adjust to very defensive.

Not just, but also at the highest level of sport, having an entire man advantage is HUGE. I’m unsure whether people are pretending not to understand or not, but when you go down a man and you’re facing at least somewhat similarly skilled players, you are SCREWED.

Rodri and his knee can go fuck themselves. No one will mention him trying to get Havertz sent off for existing and then his knee auto-imploding a few minutes later, they’d instead prefer to focus on Arsenal timewasting when defending a 2-1 lead with 10 men and how embarrassing that is

Oh shit. Maybe you can be a linesperson! Then they can claim that the PGMOL isn’t a country club of white, male Mancunians

Oh no. We may have found Oliver’s burner

We were definitely robbed. Not of a win, but of a chance to play the game. It seems like every time we go to the Etihad, something occurs that basically invalidates the actual 90 minutes of football. Absolutely no one is talking about tactics or strategy in the match yesterday. And that alone means that the match is a nothing.

Authoritarian, but you’re right.

Everyone was making fun of Arteta for stacking up on defenders, but where are those people now? We might need three more if we’re going to play half of our matches down a man.

See, I’m loving that everyone is suddenly so adamant that a yellow is a yellow. Second yellows have ALWAYS been 10x harder to earn than the first, because of the consequence of getting one. Fuck, Rodri is famous for maybe getting one for his third or fourth card-worthy challenge and then becoming immune to them for the rest of the match.

But now, suddenly, a yellow is a yellow no matter what the game context. Referees seem to want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to be able to shrug and say “you gave me no choice” but also prevent VAR from intervening because the human element is important to refereeing.

I also thought he was great in the second half, I guess because he has a shorter distance to go to intercept/press?

Ooooh, I think Hotspurts is the way to go

But apparently we’re the ones who use the “dark arts”, fucking cheating CUNTS

“Wasn’t working” = “Come on, just a few more minutes, ah, good. Whistle”

I think the “entertainment” angle is the wrong way to look at it. At the end of the day, this is a sports league. The competition is what makes it entertaining, which you allude to by pointing out that no one will talk about anything but the officiating.

Genuinely, I hope Oliver gets a few months of vacation that includes City’s return to the Emirates.

He got a phone call at halftime from an international number