Arsenal Fans Must Stop Saying EPL Referees Are Corrupt – Gary Neville

Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta directly fuels the views of fans that Premier League referees are corrupt against the club, Gary Neville has said. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, Arsenal fans have gotten used to inflaming the situation surrounding referees after the game rather than calm it down, and Arteta is also to blame for doing just that.

Neville added that using words like corruption is very wrong because no EPL referee has been bought off to blow against any team.

His words, “[Arsenal fans] use language like corruption, which means they think he’s getting paid and bought off – which is obviously not the case. We [at Manchester United] lived in a club which created a siege mentality about the referees.

Arsenal are doing a bit of that as well – there’s no doubt that what Arsenal do is inflame the situation after the game rather than calm it down, they’ve done that for 12 months – but we can’t say that’s wrong having played in the dressing room that we did.

The difference is now with social media, when we were playing back in the day and doing similar things with referees, we weren’t inflaming what would be a cause of corruption on social media. Now you have a sway of Arsenal’s anger, which comes from the players and from Mikel Arteta, and prominent fans.

You now have a social media wave now which goes towards [allegations of] corruption and cheating. In our day, we couldn’t have that much influence – everyone was at home without a phone, and didn’t have Twitter.

I hate the idea of a referee being taken off a game. [Michael Oliver] is the best referee in the country, and the idea that he would go into that game on Sunday and be swayed towards Manchester City – he’s not going to do that, he’s a professional.”

WOW.

Arsenal Football Club is an English professional football club based in Holloway, North London. Arsenal compete in the Premier League, the top flight of English football.

The club has won 13 league titles (including one unbeaten title), a record 14 FA Cups, two League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields, the Football League Centenary Trophy, one European Cup Winners’ Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.

After conducting an overhaul in the club’s operating model to coincide with Wenger’s departure, Spaniard Unai Emery was named as the club’s new head coach on 23 May 2018. He became the club’s first ever ‘head coach’ and second manager from outside the United Kingdom.

In Emery’s first season, Arsenal finished fifth in the Premier League and as runner-up in the Europa League. On 29 November 2019, Emery was dismissed as manager and former player and assistant first team coach Freddie Ljungberg was appointed as interim head coach. On 20 December 2019, Arsenal appointed former club captain Mikel Arteta as the new head coach. Arsenal finished the league season in eighth, their lowest finish since 1994–95, but beat Chelsea 2–1 to earn a record-extending 14th FA Cup win. After the season. Arteta’s title was changed from head coach to manager.