Fulham manager Alvaro Arbeloa has been fined £25,000 by the Football Association for comments he made about the referee following the Premier League draw with Manchester United last month.
The fine comes with a warning after Arbeloa was charged with ‘acting in an improper manner’ with his remarks, a charge he accepted.
Comments after Craven Cottage draw
The game at Craven Cottage on September 20 saw Lisandro Martinez score a bizarre own goal to put Fulham ahead on 63 minutes. It looked like the west London side was going to pick up a first win of the season before Matheus Cunha scored an equaliser on 89 minutes, leaving Arbeloa frustrated.
The Spaniard noted that Harry Maguire was given a free-kick before Cunha scored after a foul by the much smaller Cesar Palacios. More notably, he suggested that the referee was keen to give Manchester United decisions after a Manchester City goal at Old Trafford the previous week was wrongly allowed to stand.
Arbeloa’s initial remarks
‘All fouls for them,’ Arbeloa told Sky Sports after the game. ‘You can see before they scored, the foul against Maguire, he’s a guy who is 100 kilos. Every decision was for them.
‘And I knew. I knew after the game against Man City that they [would not] let Manchester United lose here. We deserved a little bit more.
‘We were so close. So, so close. We were a little bit unlucky again. We knew it would be difficult against this big team.
‘Also we knew what happened last week. We have seen what the referees have been doing all the match so it was a difficult game. And we were unlucky.’
Change of tune and FA verdict
Later, in the post-match press conference, Arbeloa changed his tune a bit, saying he is ‘not really happy’ but suggesting that he may have been misunderstood with his earlier comments.
‘My English is not so good. Maybe I explain myself so bad and I prefer not to say anything about the referees because you never know,’ he said. ‘When you say something that you don’t have to say, it’s better to stay calm, focus on the performance of my team and focus on the next game.
‘I’m not really happy. Like I said, I need to be focused and put my energy in all the things that I have to improve.
‘[Maguire] is a very big guy and maybe it wasn’t a foul. But it’s ok. Like I said, I prefer to analyse the game – players, systems and it’s the best for win.
‘You know when you draw a game like that, maybe you’re a little bit frustrated.’
It was too little too late, though, and on his initial comments, the independent commission ‘felt that those words suggested, not only that there was bias on the part of the match officials throughout the game on repeated occasions, but also that there may even have been an element of pre-meditation by them and/or others to try to make up for an error in a different match.’
