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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T_G" data-source="post: 202410" data-attributes="member: 175083">Henry And Wenger Should Follow Hauge LeadFriday May 19 2006By Philip CornwallThe chorus of criticism of Terje Hauge grows louder, with Jurgen Klinsmann and Sepp Blatter being the latest to criticise the Norwegian for being too quick to blow his whistle at a pivotal moment in Paris on Wednesday.But it's long past time for north London voices to quieten down - except, perhaps, for Tottenham voices, their owners clad in Barcelona shirts.Alas, it needs repeating: Hauge hurt both sides by failing to award Barcelona the “goal” Ludovic Giuly scored and allowing Jens Lehmann to stay on.It also needs repeating that Lehmann committed a mandatory red-card offence, which he had the good grace not to question so fas as I heard and have read.And that Emmanuel Eboue should have been receiving his own red card rather than winning the free-kick from which Arsenal took the lead.And that Samuel Eto'o's equaliser rightly stood.I wrote on Wednesday morning of my admiration for Arsene Wenger and Thierry Henry and I'm glad that the latter is staying with Arsenal. But though he's a player worth paying to watch, a lot of the time he isn't worth listening to. His complaints got some cheers from some drunks in a pub at the time, but ring hollow to the sober.Wenger's remarks about Samuel Eto'o being offside were off-beam, too, because no linesman in the world could fairly give that decision at full speed. Whatever the freeze-frame says, on the evidence available to the linesman he made the right call and only someone wearing an Arsenal shirt could have done otherwise.I was generous to Henry on Wednesday night because his own booking was ludicrous, but his inability and that of his manager to see the bigger picture diminish both of them.They are helped by some ludicrous media coverage, for example the front-page story in Thursday's Evening Standard, London's local paper that on this occasion became downright parochial.Reporting that Hauge had joined in the criticism of his refereeing performance, Robert Mendick wrote: “His comments will incense Arsenal fans, who believe any chance of victory was snatched away the moment the goalkeeper was dismissed.”But how many Arsenal fans, their team 1-0 up with 12 minutes left, felt that Lehmann's dismissal meant that “any chance of victory was snatched away the moment the goalkeeper was dismissed”? None. The Standard lets itself down with such nonsense.I should declare an interest here. I spent three years working at the Standard, as one of the smallest cogs on the sports desk, before leaving by choice on good terms (I was there for a leaving drink only last week). I must add that Mendick, author of this fiction, doesn't appear to work for the sports desk now and certainly didn't when I worked there.And I must record the words of the paper's chief sports correspondent, Ian Chadband (who probably wouldn't recognise me in the street): “The sad thing? The emptiness of his [Henry's] complaints. The key decision? Jens Lehmann's dismissal was fair: Arsenal were lucky thet Terje Hauge was too whistle happy to play advantage and let Ludovic Giuly's goal count; and if Eto'o was offside for his equaliser, then didn't Arsenal also go ahead from a goal won from Emmanuel Eboue's dive?”That's fine, balanced sports journalism of a kind missing on the same paper's front page and in much of the blindly pro-Arsenal coverage elsewhere.Let's join Hauge in admitting our mistakes. I was too willing to give Arsenal a free ride for their outbursts on Wednesday.Henry and Wenger were speaking in the heat of the moment, of course. But they should have calmed down by now. It's their turn to admit they got it wrong, ideally at the press conference when Henry signs his new deal.</blockquote>

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