FA charge drags things out, just make it go away

Morning all.

We might as well start Friday with a good laugh. As I’m sure you’ve seen already, Arsenal have been charged with improper conduct by The FA after the players confronted referee Michael Oliver following the red card issued to Myles Lewis-Skelly during the 1-0 win over Wolves.

They say:

“Arsenal FC has been charged after its players surrounded a match official during their Premier League fixture against Wolverhampton Wanderers FC on Saturday, 25 January.

“The club failed to ensure that its players did not behave in an improper manner around the 43rd minute. Arsenal FC has until Monday, 3 February, to provide a response.”

What can you even say?! The players objected to a terrible decision, one that has since ‘officially’ been deemed wrong by the independent panel that overturned the red card, so if the decision wasn’t wrong in the first place they wouldn’t have had anything to say to the referee. The fact that the charge came after Lewis-Skelly had been cleared feels pointed, but at this stage it’s just kinda funny.

I’ve seen it said we should fight it or refuse to pay the fine, but it’s one we should probably just get out of the way as quickly as possible. Let’s put it behind us, move on, and not drag this out any longer. We have far more important things to deal with, a huge game on Sunday for example, so ridding ourselves of as many external distractions as possible – even if they are a load of steaming horseshit – seems like the best approach to me.

Maybe The FA use one of those ‘Pay in three easy installments’ partners, and we can spread out the cost so as not to impact all the business we’re going to get done before the transfer window closes on Monday night [you may insert your emoticon of choice here].

Hopefully, this is the last time we have to talk about a ref or a decision or PGMOL to this extent again, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Leaving those aspects of it aside, I think we’ve also seen how – due to the fact major broadcasters and some very high profile pundits have cosied-up to Howard Webb – the coverage of this incident has been skewed by those relationships.

At the very least, I would expect people like Gary Neville to have the facts at their disposal when they talk about it, but they either haven’t bothered to do that, or they’ve deliberately ignored them. Maybe this is a problem easily solved by turning off, not watching or paying attention etc, but it doesn’t remove them from their high profile positions on Sky where they are pressed for their opinions on every incident and every big talking point.

Their ‘narrative’ can then be reinforced when they do their various podcasts and it gets clipped up in snippets for social media etc. Neville’s assertion that Michael Oliver had been taken off Sunday’s game against Man City was just plain wrong, he was never on it in the first place, so we have a high profile pundit  (perhaps the highest paid in England) bleating on about something he saw during a cursory look at some headlines or a random Tweet. We can talk about refs or PGMOL being not good enough, but neither is that.

Tim made a good point the other day too:

It’s great when individuals who work for broadcasting outlets that have shows like ‘Ref Watch’ and who focus so, so much of their match coverage on refereeing decisions start wondering why there is so much focus on referees and conclude that it is because of Mikel Arteta.

— Tim Stillman (@tim-stillman.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 11:58 AM

Anyway, as I said I hope we have a PGMOL free weekend – and the focus is fully on what happens on the pitch. Our game on Sunday is huge, obviously, and we’ll hear a bit from Mikel Arteta ahead of that later today when he holds his pre-game press conference. There’s unlikely to be anything new in the squad by then, and it remains to be seen how Arsenal might pivot in the last couple of days now that it looks like Ollie Watkins is going to stay at Aston Villa.

We’ll have all the press conference stories over on Arseblog News, and as ever we’ll have a preview podcast for you over on Patreon later this afternoon.

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Meanwhile, the WSL transfer deadline was last night, and there were a couple of moves involving Arsenal. First, the arrival on loan of Chloe Kelly from Man City, a player who has been frozen out there and who will hopefully be a good addition to the team from an attacking perspective. We also saw right-back Laura Wienroither go the other way, but in a separate deal. All going well, there should be some podcast analysis of that for you at some stage today.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. Have a great Friday wherever you are. If you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, there’s a post-Girona Arsecast below. Happy listening.

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