Quote Originally Posted by IUFG View Post
The Ljungberg and Cole incidents were the clearest of the reddest, red cards. Both not even resulting in a booking, of course. Ridicules. Riley? ****.
The clearest proof that the whole thing was bent was that united's entire game plan was based on Riley doing exactly what he did.

People will happily tell you these days that united were simply muscling us out of the game because we don't like it up them. This completely ignores the fact that that Arsenal side were a handful and were not the sort to be intimidated.

The truth is unted's game plan was based on kicking us as hard and as often as possible to disrupt the game, injure players and hopefully to get us to retaliate, knowing full well that their players would not get punished whatever they did (see Neville, Rio, van nistelrooy) whereas if a single Arsenal player had reacted badly they would have been sent off.

United constructed their entire game plan on the ref giving them everything they wanted. That is a hell of a risk unless you KNOW you can rely on it.