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Referee Anthony Taylor Dropped By FA After Arsenal Horror Show

By on August 19, 2013

Referee Anthony Taylor has been dropped by the FA for this weekends Premier League fixtures after his horror show at the Emirates on Saturday.

While our 3-1 loss can’t be blamed solely on his inept performance, it certainly was a contributing factor as Taylor got several decisions wrong throughout the 90 minutes. As well as giving a number of contentious free-kicks for minor offences, Taylor also drew criticism for a few of the more decisive decisions.

He awarded Villa a penalty even though he had allowed advantage after Szczesny had brought down Agbonlahor in the area. There would have been no complaints had he pointed to the spot straight away but he waived play-on as the goal was at their mercy, but when the Villa player sent the ball wide he awarded a penalty giving the away side a second bite at the cherry.

This one still hasn’t been cleared up as I’m not sure what the exact ruling is, but it is many people’s understanding that once advantage has been played you can’t simply bring it back because Villa missed the chance.

Then of course there was the decision to award a second penalty when Koscielny played the ball. This one was a tough call as from his angle it was difficult to see the touch, but an incorrect call none-the-less and no doubt the game-changing moment. Koscielny was subsequently given a booking – which would not have been the case had the ref correctly awarded a corner instead of the spot kick.

Minutes later he confounded his error by giving Kos a second, and harsh, yellow card. So a goal and a man down due to the ineptitude of the official.

Taylor also completely lost control of the game at times and ended up dishing out four yellows and one red card to Arsenal and five yellow cards to Aston Villa in a game that could be described ‘spikey’ at best.

I’m sure there were other obvious errors from the referee that I haven’t mentioned but it was a truly diabolical display from the man in the middle and he’s rightly been demoted from Premier League duty for the upcoming fixtures.

Howard Webb has been handed our game away at Fulham, hopefully he’ll be able to do a little better.