The Return of Mad Jens?

hi the group of arsenal clpe how is the training to game premerlige to wins!
from student of gebremariam negash
debre markos university of ethiopia
I AM A TEFAZO OF ASENAL
WHAT EVER YOU GOSE WITH ARSENAL!!

no matter what happens, Jens should defo become our goal keeping coach after hes done his badges, he'd help Wojo and Flaps massively.. then we jus need keown to come in n fix the defence lol

If we can forget all the shit that happened in the last minute we can still try to see how ref Dean did his game. And what his contribution was. And I must say that I noticed a few of the things that I said he would do.

Min Type Text C/NC pts weight on
1 OTHER Nasri tries to run to a ball but is blocked and no foul is given. You could see the Birmingham defender checking his and Nasri his run to block him. NC 0 0 1
1 CARD As this could lead to a goal scoring opportunity it should have been a yellow card NC 0 0 2
2 OTHER Offside given against Birmingham this was not correct NC 0 0 1
2 PENALTY Szczesny brings the striker down and so it should have been a penalty. And a yellow card. Not a red card because when a players rounds the keeper and goes to the outside this is a yellow and not a red. If he goes inside and takes the direct route to goal it is a red card NC 0 0 3
3 OTHER Offside given against Arsenal C 1 1 1
3 OTHER Foul on wilshere not given advantage C 1 1 1
10 OTHER Arshavin tries to control a ball and gets a push in the back. No foul given NC 0 0 1
10 OTHER Arshavin because of the push and the missed control commits a foul which is given; Should give the first foul ref. NC 0 0 1
17 OTHER Foul on Wilshere given C 1 1 1
18 OTHER Offside given against Birmingham C 1 1 1
21 OTHER Foul on Van Persie not given advantage given C 1 1 1
23 OTHER Two fouls holding and kicking on Arshavin nothing given. Dean has something against our Russian player NC 0 0 1
26 OTHER Offside against Birmingham C 1 1 1
27 OTHER Foul on wilshere given C 1 1 1
28 GOAL Zigic places himself in front of Szczesny but as the corner is taken he steps away from the keeper. So no foul on the keeper even for me. A correct goal C 1 3 3
29 OTHER Dangerous play on Rosicky not given NC 0 0 1
29 CARD coming in with a high foot studs showing at knee height should be booked NC 0 0 2
30 OTHER Foul from Song C 1 1 1
33 OTHER Foul from Rosicky C 1 1 1
34 PENALTY Gardner plays the ball to Zigic who is alone on goal but misses. Birmingham claim a penalty but they seem to miss the detail that the foul was outside the penalty area C 1 3 3
35 OTHER Foul against Birmingham advantage given C 1 1 1
36 OTHER Foul from Koscilny given. First tackle Koscielny played the ball second played nothing. Boywer himself cam flying in rather wild. Birmingham got the call from Dean. Can be given like that, C 1 1 1
36 CARD Koscielny gets a card. A nice little play acting from Bowyer and a soft yellow card. His foot was not higher than the ball, his sliding tackle was not frontal to the opponent NC 0 0 2
38 GOAL Nothing wrong with the Arsenal goal C 1 3 3
41 OTHER Foul on Rosicky given C 1 1 1
41 OTHER Foul on Rosicky not given advantage C 1 1 1
41 OTHER Foul on Rosicky given, third foul within a minute C 1 1 1
42 CARD Larson doesn’t agree with the correct call and shows this very loud an clear and gets booked C 1 2 2
45+ OTHER Carr kicks the ball out and goes back to defend and looks astonished as het gets the throw NC 0 0 1
46 OTHER Foul on Wilshere given C 1 1 1
48 OTHER Foul on Rosicky not given advantage C 1 1 1
49 OTHER Handball Carr but not seen and given NC 0 0 1
53 OTHER Foul given against Arshavin C 1 1 1
53 OTHER Foul given against Clichy C 1 1 1
53 CARD Again a soft yellow card for a small obstruction NC 0 0 2
55 OTHER Offside against Birmingham C 1 1 1
56 OTHER Foul on Rosicky not given NC 0 0 1
56 OTHER Nasri then commits a foul which is given. Should punish the first foul. NC 0 0 1
57 OTHER Offside against Birmingham C 1 1 1
60 OTHER Foul on Nasri not given NC 0 0 1
60 OTHER Nasri commits a foul advantage given NC 0 0 1
62 OTHER Foul given against Arsenal for a very small foul on a defender. So after all those years Dean shows that he knows this rule but unfortunately just against Arsenal yet. C 1 1 1
64 OTHER Foul on Van Persie not given NC 0 0 1
64 OTHER Foul on Van Persie not given NC 0 0 1
65 OTHER Offside against Arsenal C 1 1 1
67 OTHER foul against Van Persie near to our own penaltyarea not given. Like I said he still only give those fouls against us on defending players NC 0 0 1
70 OTHER Foul on Bendtner given signalled by the assistant C 1 1 1
71 OTHER Foul from Wilshere not given NC 0 0 1
77 OTHER Foul on Rosicky given C 1 1 1
78 CARD this time the ref gives no card against the birminghamplayer just a lecture. Compare this with the way he treated Clichy NC 0 0 2
80 OTHER Foul on Djourou not given advantage played C 1 1 1
80 OTHER Foul on Rosicky given C 1 1 1
85 OTHER Foul against Rosicky given, really dont know for what? NC 0 0 1
86 OTHER foul against chamakh not given NC 0 0 1
88 OTHER Foul against clichy given C 1 1 1
89 GOAL How much that I would have liked it but I cannot find anything against the rules C 1 3 3
89 CARD Koscielny is still down on the floor as the Birmingham mob passes him by. Ferguson punches him on the head. Needless, not a very great act of sportsmanship and bad behaviour and most of all should get him send off NC 0 0 3
90 OTHER Foul from Nasri C 1 1 1
90+ OTHER Birmingham take about one minute to make a substition and the game back going. No real added time for this. NC 0 0 1
90+ OTHER Two footed tackle on Clichy ref gives nothing even Larsonn apologises to Clichy. Dean gives nothing NC 0 0 1
91+ CARD This was worthy of a yellow card NC 1 0 2
92+ OTHER Foul on Djourou again nothing given NC 0 0 1
94+ CARD Ferguson (red card remember) kicks the ball away and gets a yellow card C 1 2 2

TOTAL 35 44 83
% 54,69% 53,01%

CARDS 3 9 33,33%
PENALTY 1 2 50,00%
GOAL 3 3 100,00%
OTHER 4 9 44,44%

TOTAL 11 23 47,83%

It will be brushed under the carpet but once again I have seen the same blatant flaws in the game of ref Dean. Fouls on Arsenal defenders are easily neglected. On the other hand they are not.

Dean is doing a personal crusade against Arshavin. After seeing all the games when both were involved this is crystal clear. The Russian gets no calls from Dean. Not even the most blatant ones.

Dean didn’t see the punch against the head from Koscielny after the Birmingham goal. He was to busy running around in joy I think and forgot that as a ref you must keep an eye on the celebrating players to see they do nothing wrong. Dean clearly didn’t check them and missed this.

In extra time he let a two footed tackle on Clichy go that even for Larsson was embarrassing as he showed to Clichy. You could see him apologising to Clichy. As a result Birmingham kept a long spell of possession deep in our half. After a substitution that took ages in extra time and kicking the ball away he gave almost no extra extra time. In the first half he did this by letting play go on for more than one minute after the 4 minutes had been gone.

When we talk about the bias index one should keep in mind that the best way to show/hide your bias is to not give fouls to a certain team. I have counted 12 fouls that Dean did not give during this game which should have been given for Arsenal. And this number does not include the times when he played the advantage which was about 5 or 6 times. Not that there was any real advantage, it was more that we kept possession of the ball.

And if you can stand the sight of it you must check the final whistle. I have never seen a ref jumping with both hands in the air when he blows the final whistle. Dean is the first I have seen doing this in my whole career of following football which goes some 40 years now. Some refs raise both hands at the end of the game but I never see them doing it while jumping in the air. I think he really was a very happy man at the final whistle. Job done. Once again.

Are Premier League matches fixed? A review of the evidence
By Tony Attwood

Consider Mark Clattenburg. He is 35, and one of 16 select group officials that run EPL games.

He is the guy who failed to punish Wayne Rooney for the elbow against Wigan Athletic’s James McCarthy. Then he gave Fulham a penalty against Blackburn Rovers that not everyone was convinced by.

If this was a one off incident we might shrug and let it pass. But it is not. We have endless revelations of bad judgement by refs week after week not just on this site, but by radio commentators too.

So what’s going on? In answering that question there are several possible routes you might take. Each has implications, but each can be misused to represent an argument that is incomplete or can easily be set aside.

The first explanation is that yes, the refs are fairly incompetent. If you listen to commentaries on Radio 5 Live from the BBC you will hear endless statements to this effect. They never seek to explain why refs are incompetent, but they just say they are. As such it is incomplete – if you believe the refs make mistakes more than they should you need to say why.

The second approach might be that refs do get a lot of things wrong, but by and large that is the nature of the beast. Football is fast, judgements need to be made instantly, there are no replays, and so it is never surprising that mistakes are made. In such a scenario mistakes should even out – a bad decision for Man U one week, a good one the next. Such an explanation doesn’t explain why there is not more technological help for refs, it just accepts that this is how it is. Such an explanation doesn’t explain why we have so few refs in the elite group, or why those who seem to make a particularly large number of errors don’t get removed for re-training. Nor do the approach ever release proper stats to show that the errors do even up, and that they are evenly spread among refs.

The third view is that actually there is nothing wrong. The standard of refereeing is high and all is ok with the organisation behind it. This view doesn’t explain any of Walter’s comments on this site, where the detailed event by event analysis shows that things are not being well run. Nor does it explain the figures that Dogface comes up with week after week and through which we are able to predict what the ref will do to Arsenal. What’s more they don’t explain the inadequacies that Walter has pointed out that exist within the organisation running top class refereeing in England (the lack of referees, the failure to deal with refs who consistently refuse to implement Fifa rulings, the lack of transparency about marking of refs, the failure to deal with refs who regularly fall below a reasonable standard etc etc).

The fourth view suggests there is something seriously wrong, and that in effect the refs are being bought through a system similar to that being used in Italy a few years back. In my view this is the only one of the four explanations that covers all the issues and observations that we know about, and which doesn’t have the gaps in which the first three views have.

The fourth explanation is not complete and can be challenged, I admit. There are a lot more stats to be presented. But simply pointing to gaps in our analysis so far does not make the fourth explanation wrong. Rather it points to the extra information needed. To my mind the first three explanations fail to answer the vast majority of points, and if we are going to question any explanations it should be these three. If we are going to work to complete the theory we need to do more on the fourth explanation.

I’ve decided to come back to this issue at this particular moment because of two things. First, because despite the fact that the first three explanations are always incomplete they are now being defended through an extraordinary selection of mis-directed arguments.

One of these has always been with us: Arsenal complain about the refs because they are losing games. They don’t complain about refs when they are winning. (A variation is, stop talking about the refs and let us focus on winning matches – the ref issue is a distraction. Some Arsenal web sites are really getting into this argument now).

But now consider this approach.

Alan Leighton, head of the referees’ union, Prospect, recently said that match officials feel beleaguered. “These are people who are used to pressure day in and day out – it’s not like they’re some kind of weaklings who can’t take it. But at this time of the season, we’re getting to a stage where it becomes very difficult for anybody to sensibly do a job. I think more and more referees will get to a stage of thinking: “Do I really want to put up with this?’”

He then went on to explore the argument that a bad decision one week often means a good decision the next week – without in any way exploring if this is a valid argument. To excuse bad judgements by saying it all balances out in the end seems ludicrous. We don’t say this about marketing students’ exams – sorry I know you did poorly in your maths exam and got less than you should, but you got more than you should in physics so it is ok. Even in the barbaric days of the death penalty in the UK we didn’t say, yes sorry, we hanged the wrong guy this time, but we let a guilty man get away last week so it is all right. You can’t excuse one error by making a second error.

Yet such an argument seems ok – and as such the whole Prospect piece is a clever ploy, since it not only fails to deal with the key issues, but it suggests the key issues do not exist. It takes it as a starting point that all is well with the referees and that it is the managers and fans and players who are out of order. If they would only shut up and let the refs get on with their work, and their mistakes, we would be ok.

And just in case you are not convinced, here’s Leighton’s actual words: “It would be nice if some managers recognise when they slag off a referee for having missed something, that they actually benefited from things that weren’t seen in a previous game.”

So refereeing as a mish mash of errors – hardly the way such a huge industry is run. Can you imagine what industry would say if HM Revenue and Customs (the UK tax collector) used this approach. “Yes Mr Attwood I know we demanded £250,000 too much tax from your company last year, but the year before you paid a bit less than you should, so its all right really.” I think not.

To try and unravel this, and get behind the smoke screen that the referees themselves are now putting out, we need to decide where the evidence takes us.

For me, this isn't the biggest injury replacement news. The bigger question is who backs up Kos and Squizz now that Djourou is out for the year? There's a much better chance that one of them gets hurt, than Almunia getting hurt. Plus, with Song out for now, one of the natural stop-gap replacements is out too.
I think I'm sweating our central defensive pair more than our goalie situation.

Can we recall Bartley?

I'm thinking not. I think he's pretty regular in their lineup, and I'm sure they wouldn't part with him unless we had some right to it. And I doubt that.

If worst comes to the very worst, and we're left to one fit senior CB, and Song isn't back, I wouldn't mind Sagna at CB with Eboue at RB. I hope it doesn't come to that, though.

Probably correct. I'm just saying that's a more relevant topic than who's backing up Almunia. Much better chance of something like that happening.

This is seriously awesome. Thanks for the great post about it Sairax, a bit of needed history for a new Gooner. I too am giddy and anticipatory, especially as a staunch fan of German football! Mad Jens is back!!

This season, to this point in time, has been one big stupid.

Win-Win. As Sairax said, Almunia's best season ever was in 07-08, when Jens was glaring at him from the substitute bench the entire season. And for those who are worried Jens might play, no worries because Almunia is on good form right now. And for those who are worried Jens might not play, no worries because Almunia's good form can go as quickly as a shot can go from Manuel's hands.
And, most importantly, I cannot wait for Mad Jens to let the likes of Denilson, Diaby, Rosicky, and Squillaci have it after any bad performance. CANNOT WAIT.

the 2006 champions league final was my first real arsenal match...watching highlight of the final made me hate almunia even more since he should have stopped both of the goals...

Our hopes of winning the league do not depend on which players step up, or how much can we bare the brunt of injuries, or how much we regroup after a horrible fortnight. It all depends on how many times we play in that yellow jersey. It's horrendous, and brings us bad luck. I hate it.

Rhubarb and custard isn't bad, but never go the full banana

This is like telling a joke at a funeral, or abusing animals, or apartment hunting while drunk. You just don't do it, cos you'll regret it.

That comic at the end was hilarious

I think he was pretty bad his last season for us, and that was years ago, so I'd be pretty worried if we actually have to rely on him.

But if it's a choice between him and James Shea, then I guess Jens isn't that bad, and it would be nice to have the old boy around again.

I'm just sitting back and enjoying the hilarity of it all.

Bild reporting that deal is done, but nothing official has come out yet. Keep ya posted.

i wonder who will be or number one for next season

What a strange turn of events. I wonder if he will actually play. There are only 10 games to go and I can't imagine Almunia will need to be rested during that time.