Arsène Wenger handed two-match ban by Uefa and Arsenal fined €10,000?

UEFA are idiots, they let Barcelona get away with intimidating referee's, cheating, diving, racist abuse and yet they punish Wenger for MANAGING HIS TEAM!!!!

It is ridiculous.

The whole idea of touchline bans is unworkable and should be scrapped, this nonsense shows that so clearly, yet the simple minded fools at UEFA cannot see that.

Modern technoology means that managers, especially at the top level can easily work around it and therefore defeats the object of the ban.

Using the Wenger example, he is in the ground watching the game, he can comment to anyone sitting next him and they can phone down to the touchline, there can be no proof that this has happened without examination of the phone records, something that would be beyond UEFA juristiction, and they cannot dictate who has and who has not got possession of or acces to mobile phones or other such technology, unless they want to ban such tech from the touchline, and this would be damned near impossible and potentially dangerous fromthe point of view of getting help to players etc.

Now this means that you would need to ban Wenger from the stadium during the match, this would be even more pointless unless they have a UEFA official sitting next to him at home during the match as Wenger will always be able to watch televised coverage, and so can then phone through to a contact at the ground.

There is no way that this can be controlled, if Wenger was passing messages, then the only thing here that he is really guilty of is not being subtle enough in the way that he did it.

For UEFA to seek to make a big issue of this seems to me to make them look incredibly stupid.

UEFA RULES STATES

"that a manager may not communicate with his team during a fixture for which he is suspended and may follow the game from the stands only,"

and another funny qoute

Wenger said last week he was confused over the rules.

"It was difficult because you didn't really know what the rules were. It was a bit confusing. It is a real concern because up to what level can you stop someone doing their job?"

ISNT IT SIMPLE you get the touchline ban and CANNOT communicate with the team

AND YOU WOULD THINK WITH THE AMOUNT OF TOUCHLINE BANS WENGER HAS HAD HE WOULD KNOW THE RULES BY NOW ....!!

if he thinks he will get away with that excuse

he hasnt lost the plot

HE HAS LOST THE WHOLE GOD-DAM ALLOTMENT

Well improper conduct with the officials could be fair enough I guess depending on what he did. But the two-match ban for passing messages to the assistant coach via a third party is stupid. He had a sideline ban and he was in the stands. I don't see the big deal in him communicating with his team through another party. He's still serving his punishment.

At last someone got him to bring out the cheque book!

Seriously, this is another headache Wenger doesn't need. But as long as Arsenal go on into the CL proper, this wont matter

UEFA wants a piece of pie of Fabregas bounty.

OR

UEFA is bored this summer and wants to throw dart at someone for fun.

Its a joke they seem to make up rules as they go along

Wenger has appealed against it, and i guess he will be successful in that.

I think it's a bit harsh.