Another big time homer

By Chris Kirwan
March 26 2003

The Blues went down 2-1 at Highbury to a controversial Patrick Vieira strike. The Frenchman won the game for Arsenal after Wayne Rooney had threatened to steal the show again for the Blues.

Everton produced another resolute performance, and did excellently to get back on level terms after Pascal Cygan had opened the scoring. The Blues levelled with another cracking goal by Wayne Rooney. Moyes said:

“I am delighted for him. It was a great goal and he came into it a lot more in the second half because I thought he was poor in the first."

But the hard work was undone by weak refereeing from Alan Wiley. There were three offences in the build up to Vieira's winner. Bergkamp tripped up Weir, he then fouled Unsworth to prevent him clearing, and then Wright was impeded by Freddie Ljunberg lying in an offside position. While the defending for the goal was undeniably poor, the referee should not have allowed the goal to stand. Moyes reflected:

"It was a poor goal to give away and I am not sure if Ljungberg, who had impeded Richard Wright, was offside or not.

“David Unsworth also felt that he was fouled by Bergkamp but we can’t change the result, so there’s not a great deal of point in talking about it.”

The game also saw the return of Duncan Ferguson, who was denied the opportunity to put the Blues back on level terms for the second by excellent blocking from the Arsenal defence.

It was another good battling performance by Moyes' team, but they will be disappointed to be leaving empty handed. There was a marked improvement in the second half performance, but you can't help but feel that the Blues let a chance of getting at least a point slip away with some sloppy defending.

Update: The Blues are considering making a complaint to the FA over the actions of Alan Wiley: From the Official Everton Site.