Arsenal fans have set up a petition calling for Mike Dean to be banned from officiating Arsenal games. Seriously.
Saturday’s Chelsea FC-Arsenal clash was marred by controversy. Diego Costa managed to get Gabriel Paulista sent off after use of both his physical and childish attributes. With Santi Cazorla also shown a red card later on during the contest, Gunners fans have set up a petition against Mike Dean, the Premier League official in charge of the game.
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Costa took up his usual role as the antagonist of the play, flailing an arm at Laurent Koscielny, chest bumping him to the ground, then provoking Gabriel into a petulant kick out. The striker essentially pushed the Arsenal defender over the edge and was quick to draw Dean’s attention to a leg flick from Gabriel that admittedly carried little weight.
Nonetheless, Dean looked over to his fourth official and showed Gabriel a red card, in the process handing Chelsea the upper hand in a tight contest. Arsenal fans, irate at what they perceive as a robbery, are calling on the Football Association (FA) to ‘prevent Mike Dean from refereeing another Arsenal game’.
The petition sets out its agenda as an opportunity to force ‘an inquiry to ability to referee Arsenal games’. The rest of the description is pretty entertaining so here it is.
"Major incidents have occurred in recent and past games that show he is inept at refereeing at this level now. The recent events at Chelsea V Arsenal (19/09/15) highlight this where two Arsenal players were dismissed while Diego Costa the opposition player made 4 straight red card incidents and was show one yellow card only. Also the incident where Mike Dean celebrated for the opposition, when they scored a goal, this was in the Arsenal V Tottenham Hotspur fixture (26/02/2012)."
As you can see, the motion has gained momentum with 84,988 supporters signed up out of a target of 150,000 at the time of writing. Just what will happen if they hit the 150k target no-one really knows. They’ll probably tweet it out or something. Or print it out and put it next to their dusty Premier League trophy from 2004 and in between the cherished pictures of Thierry Henry that Arsene Wenger undoubtedly still cries over.
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It should be pointed out, though, that a large chunk of those who have added their name to the petition are probably doing so for the heck of it or as a joke. While people like to think that petitions actually carry weight, most of them don’t and something like this almost certainly won’t either.
Having said that, Mike Dean did have a horror show on Saturday and with respect to both teams as well. Chelsea were denied a few penalty shouts (one that was certainly clear-cut) while Arsenal of course had the Diego Costa debacle to deal with.
Personally I think the petition is great as long as it is tongue-and-cheek. Having said that, this is football and these are football fans so it would not be a surprise if this was a genuine attempt at intervention against Mike Dean.
Oh well, I hope it spiced up your Tuesday afternoon at least.
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