1 This is to all Arsenal Fans.

To fans all over the world, when a player goes down “unnecessarilly”, he is called a diver and a cheat. In modern football, there are rules. Within these rules, some infringements are not given if its extent is not evidenced by a response. In such cases, the referee assumes, such contacts are acceptable to the player and would wave play on. I am not saying all players should go down whenever they are touched. In todays football, a lot of gamesmanship goes on and is fast becoming part of the game. Infact, it is now deciding who wins a very crucial game, like we’ve seen lately. I saw the game. The closest defender to Henry was not Carles and Carles took it upon himself to cut across him and barge him off.
A referee’s rationale here would be, WAS THERE A BALL IN SIGHT TO BE WON? NO

This is not just the point. Puyols motive was malicious. It was very obvious they were like cat and mouse throughout the game and objectively I think Puyol went just a little bit too far.

WAS IT A FOUL?

YES! WITHOUT A DOUBT

WAS IT SO BAD THAT HENRY HAD TO HOLD HIS FACE, DESPITE CONTACT MADE TO HIS CHEST?

NO, INFACT HENRY COULD HAVE NOT REACTED AT ALL

HAD HENRY NOT REACTED AT ALL, WOULD THE REFEREE HAD GIVEN THE FREE KICK?

NO, HE WOULD HAVE WAVED PLAY ON!

2. AHMED — To me, this is the bare truth. It is not fair to single out a player as a diver. The term “diver” is for players like PIRES DROGBA & RVN. You dont know which club I support. I’m just objective here. To dive is to cheat. Don’t allow the cliche (A dive is a dive ) to get in the way of reasoning. Not all going downs are dives! At times, players have to show the referee they were caught, particularly if it happened very fast.

All this argument is really unnecessary if you can differentiate a dive from an infringement call.

FOR ME, Henry was fouled.
He over-reacted.
But there was no other option to get his call.

END OF.

so your posts are not meant to be taken 100% seriously now?

Yes, I do realise that such comments (and sports commentary in general) is not 100% serious – that writers often take creative liberty (as I did with my post title) or allow emotions to creep into their writing.

I\’d suggest that you allow others the same liberty. You might be interested in reading the rest of the site and checking out other articles on our Arsenal channel ( http://soccerlens.com/tags/arsenal/ – you\’ll find that it\’s not all hype and \’baiting\’ as you think.

The post you\’re referring to is this one:

http://arseblog.com/WP/?p=86

I agree with your analysis on the most part – it was out of character and hopefully its one off.

But from where I sit it wasnt a foul (by the way, now that you\’re here, see Exhibit A in the post – is that a foul?).

The rest well – the holier-than-thou comment is for arsenal fans in general and is my opinion based on what i\’ve seen/read/heard in the last few seasons (especially after 2001). It\’s not personal, as almost all comments seem to think it is.

Have I written an article to bash henry and bait arsenal fans? Really? You, as a serious blogger, should know better than that. Read the rest of the site, then make your judgements.

I still stand by what I\’ve said here though, so if you disagree with anything I said in the post let me know (the foul bit I guess we\’ll never agree on).

If you were a regular Arseblog reader you’d know my ‘in the past’ comments were not to be take 100% seriously.

However, you’ve said you’ve written an article to bash Henry and to bait Arsenal fans.

Maybe you should have linked to my post yesterday where I said that what he did in terms of clutching his face was not right and that we expect better from him.

How is that holier-than-thou?

The snippet you quote is absolutely out of context.

This is the full line:

And I’m bashing Henry now (and baiting Arsenal fans) because of the ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude i’ve seen over the past few years.

It’s a comment half-way through, so you might want to read it again.

Would do you well to read my last comment as well.

And I’m bashing Henry now (and baiting Arsenal fans)

Good to see you’re being objective then. Grow up.

You might want to look at my articles on Robben and Reyes and my match review for the England vs Hungary warmup game (Gerrard dive).

Please, let me clarify one more thing – this is directed towards Arsenal fans, not Henry. He is an outstanding footballer, who did something really really stupid.

The reason i’ve persisted with this issue (4 posts in 2 days) is because of what Henry himself has said, and more importantly, of how Arsenal fans have put him on a pedestal when he is just like all of us.

If you guys can accept that, then we’re good to move on.

Tim: Wrong is wrong, definitely. But who will tell Henry that (who said he did not dive)? Wrong cannot be justified by saying ‘they did it, so we should do it to them as well’.