Arsenal's siege mentality in dealings with officials is polluting game

Here is an image to inflame the loyal support of Arsenal. Old Trafford, tomorrow afternoon, domestic showdown time: Thierry Henry goes by the right side of United's defence as though it doesn't exist and cuts into the box. Roy Keane - who else? - comes barrelling in for the saving move.

Henry, the quicksilver man, breezes by Keane's tackle, which is fractionally mistimed, but is caught by the Irishman's boot. Henry goes down in a heap. The referee waves play on. No penalty. An outrage? Or the wages of sin?

How it works psychologically if you're a Gooner - judging by reactions to a theory advanced here earlier this week that when Henry's team-mate Robert Pires cheated Portsmouth outrageously with a dive that earned a penalty, and his manager, Arsène Wenger, refused to concede the fact, the whole game was diminished - is that another stage of the Great Conspiracy has been reached.

The siege mentality that Wenger and his players carry into their dealings with match officials is inevitably adopted on the Highbury terraces. But, much more seriously, it also pollutes the game as surely as an oil spill devastates a place of natural beauty.

In the despoliation, any hope of improvement in the sometimes appalling levels of officiating disfiguring big games dwindles still further.

That was the real point of Pires' terrible deceit. For the average Arsenal fan it was simply a case of some natural correction of past injustice. "What about Ruud van Nistelrooy?" they cried. But what about him? A professional consensus called up yesterday agreed that the Dutchman arrived here with a certain propensity to hit the deck a little too eagerly, but said that in the two years of his emergence in the Premiership as a relentless and extremely physical goalscorer his offences have been relatively slight.

Certainly no one could attach to him the kind of atrocity committed by Pires against Pompey. Also, then, what about Michael Owen, a paragon of the scoring art? Yes, a certain diving tendency has been noticed, but not of a blatant type; indeed in professional circles the penalty he conjured on a bad night for England against Slovakia earlier this year is generally acknowledged as a masterpiece of running the line between legality and sharp practice. But then didn't he reveal that as a teenager his first England coach, Glenn Hoddle, had advised him that he should never ignore such possibilities?

In an earlier age, the great Manchester City and England forward Francis Lee was generally seen as a top, if not the supreme, diver, but Lee's intensely physical style, and sheer pace, meant that he was never required to try it on as transparently as Pires did against Portsmouth. Lee also brought a degree of irony to his work. Once, when he was convinced that George Best had dived for a free-kick, Lee performed with mock indignation a spectacular belly flop into a great pool of muddy water. Maine Road shook with laughter, but then at that time diving wasn't poisoning the game.

Last weekend the ripples from the Pires incident touched other players who were, at least in the opinion of those professionals, quite innocent. United's wonderfully adroit Cristiano Ronaldo was accused of cheating against Charlton. In fact the extent of his mastery of his marker was so profound, the defender, Radostin Kishishev, was obliged to try to take the body along with the ball.

Kevin Phillips of Southampton was also labelled a diver when he fell - in another professional view - after a late, unintentional collision with the Wolves defender Denis Irwin.

But apart from the flourishing of an indiscriminate branding iron, Pires' offence created another, and much more significant, problem. When the referee, Alan Wiley, fell for the dive and awarded a penalty - Pires later apologised, the Portsmouth defender Dejan Stefanovic claimed - it meant that there would be no review of film evidence. The referee had acted. So the matter was set in stone.

It cannot be right that the referees retain their God-like status amid all the evidence that they are as prone as anyone else to making critical mistakes.

Managers and players cannot criticise officials for fear of being charged with bringing the game into disrepute. But, unlike the referees, they are contractually obliged to talk into a camera, however raw their emotions after matches that may have shaped their season adversely - if not wrecked their careers. The referee, even if he has made a decision which dwarfs any other post-game point of interest, is not similarly committed. He can stride off into the night without comment - or questioning.

All the time, a proper working relationship between the professionals and the referees becomes that little bit more difficult to attain.

Someone needs to break the circuit - and who better than Wenger? And not just because of some romantic prompting to improve the game he has in so many other ways enhanced. No, it would be a move laden with benefits. Unquestionably, United's competitive values have improved with Sir Alex Ferguson's long march from the undisciplined excesses which marked the Old Trafford days of Eric Cantona, Paul Ince and Mark Hughes. Most vitally, it would turn a much more searching spotlight on the referees.

The officials allegedly operate under ever-rising pressure, and no doubt it is true that examination by television has never been more intense. But how is this pressure reflected in terms of accountability? In no perceptible way. Referees are still largely immune to official criticism. They are always right.

Pires, a subdued, ineffective figure in Arsenal's humiliating defeat by Internazionale in mid-week, paid a much heavier price than the man who rewarded his cheating with a penalty. The referee, Alan Wiley, has had no rebuke, no call to explain himself. That could only have happened if Wenger had come out to say that Pires was guilty of cheating.

Meanwhile, count it a miracle if Arsenal win a penalty today.