Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
And we're going to talk about the weekend sport now. Gavin Cooney, sports correspondent with The 42, is here. Well, we have no choice but to start with what happened with Arsenal and West Ham yesterday. I mean, you saw it, did you?
I did indeed, yeah. So did I. I saw it and then I saw it again and again and again. And I think we saw 17 replays worth of the moment.
That looks like... Incredible. We were having our dinner and we all had to stop and like kind of hold our breath for all of that time because of our Arsenal fan. All right. Yeah, it was just such, I mean, it was huge.
How old is the Arsenal fan?
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Chapter 2: What happened in the Arsenal versus West Ham match?
12.
Okay, so he'll have never seen Arsenal win the league.
No, very invested.
Yeah, they've got one hand on the trophy now, thanks mainly to that hand across the Arsenal goalkeeper by, was it Pablo, the West Ham player. It was a foul. It was a foul. Like I saw people say it was controversial. Yeah. It wasn't really like it was a very clear foul. You can't interfere with a goalkeeper's arms as he's jumping to catch the ball.
All of those replays did show us quite clearly that he was being held down. So it was having an impact on his reach.
I think he would have caught the ball had his arm not been impeded. So I think, in fairness, if you isolate that moment, it's a clear foul and it's correct to disallow the goal. And therefore, obviously, Arsenal win the game. It's by far the most difficult game of the remaining three.
And now they just have to beat Burnley and Crystal Palace and they're guaranteed to win their first league title since, what is it, 2004.
But what makes it controversial, I guess, is if you start zooming out and you look at all of the other fouls in that moment and all the grappling and holding that goes on in the penalty area and then zoom out again and look at all of the grappling and the holding and the fouling of goalkeepers that's happened in every other corner across the Premier League this season.
And you think it feels a little bit unfair or inconsistent. And that's the it's the consistency piece that West Ham really had an issue with that they know physicality, as they like to call it, is allowed at corners. And they say, why are you why are you punishing this?
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Chapter 3: Why was the controversial goal disallowed in the Arsenal game?
So, that Arsenal have now benefited from it suddenly being refereed properly. That's a bitter irony for West Ham and Arsenal rivals.
And I get that. And look, for West Ham, the stakes are so high for them as well. You know, what a sickner.
Well, that's the it wasn't like it was correct. Like they took, however, 17 replays to view it. They didn't need that many replays to get it right because it was obvious after a couple of replays. But it was just the stakes and the tension of it all that meant that the VAR and the referee were like, let's take our time and be absolutely sure here.
And it's one of the most I know it's been called the biggest VAR decision ever, or at least in the Premier League. And it is because you've got the title race resting on it and the relegation. So now West Ham are a point behind Tottenham. Tottenham have a game in hand. They played that against Leeds tonight. If they win that, West Ham are four points adrift with two games left.
They're in a mountain of trouble now.
Well, we have a listen to Michael Arteta, the Arsenal boss, who was asked after the game about the decision to disallow the goal. Here's what he had to say.
That is obviously a big decision. And when I had to be critical, I have been. And today I have to congratulate him because I think you need a lot of courage and bravery to stand out, to at least give the opportunity to a referee to have a look at the action because there is so much chaos and bodies in and around the box.
But when you see the picture clearly, I think there is no question that it's a killer foul.
Resisting the temptation to be hooping and hollering.
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