Everton 0-1 Arsenal

Last updated : 09 November 2006 By Les Roberts

Because, in his latest and, potentially, most bizarre Goodison refereeing decision, he has cemented his reputation as the Premiership's pantomime villain.


The game was going along quite normally until the 19th minute when Andy Johnson went down in the box under a heavy challenge from Phillipe Senderos.


But, instead of pointing to the spot as he should have done, it was a penalty after all, Mr Poll adopted what appears to be default stance of referees when Johnson is fouled and put his hands behind his back.


And then to make matter worse he then sent off James McFadden for allegedly calling him, and I quote: "A fucking cheat".


But McFadden's side of the story is that he said: "That's fucking shite".


Now I'm no linguistics expert but for Mr Poll to have misheard the Scot he must have been adopting his best Arsene Wenger accent and it came out something like: "Zat's fooking sheet".


And, not one to miss an opportunity, Poll made McFadden possibly the first player to be given a straight red for saying something to the ref.

"I said 'That's fucking shit'...you fucking cheat!"





































And he'll be made up that his name is all over the papers today as this whopper just loves the attention.


This decision just goes to prove it, as most people in his position would have kept their heads down last night after the shit-storm he stirred up at Tottenham at the weekend.


But anyway, the game…


We actually looked better once McFadden had been sent off as we got the ball down and played some good stuff.


Most people will be wetting themselves that Arsenal have a second string that can play the ball around well, which is fair enough because they can, but there's no doubt that with eleven men, this Everton side would have played them off the Park and be in the last eight this morning!


We put in the sort of performance that teams usually do against us when they go down to ten men, and at no point last night did Everton look like they had a numerical disadvantage.


But there was always that feeling that Arsenal would wear us down eventually and score late on.


And so it proved as Emmanuel Adebayor was given room in the box to plant a free header past, the again excellent, Tim Howard.


What was most disappointing about the goal though was that it came as a result of some basic bad marking on a night when we were solid at the back.


A routine corner was swung into the area and, for some reason, none of the Everton defence decided to pick up the biggest fella on the pitch and Adebayor rose unchallenged to place a header into the back of the Park End net.


Cue bedlam from the 63 Arsenal fans that had bothered to turn up!


We had our chances during the game with Poom making a great save from Andy Johnson and Nuno Valente hitting the roof of the net as the ball spooned off his foot as he went in for a tackle.


If Seaman had been in goal it would have flew in!


And with almost the last touch of the game, Johnson headed a great chance over from inside the area.


But, as on Saturday, for all our neat passing and approach play we simply didn't create enough opportunities, but this time it was partially due to the fact that we were a player short.


And so, not for the first time, we went out of the League Cup just before it
starts to get interesting.


Nice one Graham!