With three minutes to go, what did the Luxembourgois referee in the Arsenal v Dynamo Kiev think he was doing? Deep in Arsenal's half, the referee dropped the ball. Only Cesc Fabregas appeared to know what was going on. In fact he quoted the referee as saying the Kiev players should leave the ball to the Arsenal player.
What on earth kind of refereeing is that? It was the worst dropped ball I've ever seen. It resulted from a collision in which a player from each side was injured and should have been contested. It was 30 metres from the Arsenal goal.
So why did the referee give it to Fabregas? So that he could clear it up field? He did that all right, but cleared it straight into the path of the pink-booted Bendtner, who controlled the ball with his arm and scored.
The dropped ball should have been contested normally. But this method of restarting has gone our of fashion in Europe because of a perceived danger of clashes resulting from them. The referee, I'm afraid, gave this goal to Arsenal.
As well as the goal, the petulant Aliev was so infuriated that he tried to push the referee out of the way at a free kick and got himself sent off. Alieve deserved everything he got after being caught rolling around in agony and then leaping to his feet and sprinting after the ball when he wasn't given a free kick.
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