mind-set I can’t quite wrap my head around. He’d not have celebrated a goal that brought us back to 3-2 and yet 3-3 was very, very nearly as unsatisfactory. It was absolutely essential for us to win and we had seconds left to do so. Yet his instinct was to run off and perform a choreographed celebration about a goal he scored last weekend.
His little routine took 13 seconds. Whilst not a significant amount of time it still could've been the difference between that long ball at the end turning into a chance rather than the ref blowing for full time. Though as you say, it's the mind-set i find most annoying. I think he's the only player in the squad who would've done that.
It just seems odd that his instinct would not be dominated by the desire to get back to his half and start the game again rather than to perform a pre-planned celebration about a goal in another game. I don't think I'll change my mind about it being a highly incongruous reaction, given that his goal had left us in an utterly unsatisfactory position that was only mitigated by the moderate relief that we'd managed to claw anything at all from a game that seemed lost.
Oh I have absolutely no doubt that the referee chose to play less than the minimum time allocated because he didn't want us to score the winner. I sensed a bias towards Bournemouth throughout the game but that act confirmed it.
When do you EVER see a ref blow up when a team is about to knock a ball in the box? They always let the final passage play out before blowing.
I really struggle with the idea that someone can consider the penalty against Xhaka to be the correct decision (it was) and then criticise Bellerin for not being strong enough or not getting his body between the ball and the player (looking at you Thierry Henry) which seemed to be a commonly held view in the media.
He did get his body between the ball and the player, and at that point the player shoved him over. Muppets.
I'm with Bignose on this. His goal effectively had them reeling on the ropes and he chose to preen and prance when he should have been gathering the ball from the net and heading back to the centre spot, like Alexis did for both previous goals. The man is a cvnt [Ollie not Monty - well - Monty too, but for entirely different reasons d'ya see]