AS ARSENE WENGER trudged off the Nou Camp pitch last night, he had just one recommendation for his opposite number, Barcelona’s Pep Guardiola.

“Wenger just told me I should congratulate the referee but I did not run into the ref – so I couldn’t do that,” said Guardiola in the aftermath of last night’s 3-1 win.

Though the Catalan giants out-thought, out-passed and out-played the visitors for 90 minutes last night, Arsenal have found themselves with a ready-made excuse this morning following the controversial dismissal of Robin van Persie.

Having picked up a soft booking in the closing minutes of the first half, van Persie received his marching orders after 56 minutes when he continued to play on despite being flagged for offside. Italian referee Massimo Busacca deemed the Dutch striker’s actions to constitute time-wasting and issued a second yellow without hesitation.

Stats love

Though the statistics suggest otherwise, Arsenal were furious with what they saw as a game-changing blunder by the Italian referee.

Over the course of the 90 minutes, Barcelona had 17 shots on target while Arsenal amazingly had none. Barcelona defender Sergio Busquets was the Gunners marksman last night, errantly heading past Valdes in the 52nd minute.

Reuters reports that Barcelona had 70 percent of possession, with Arsenal only managing two touches within their opponents’ penalty area – one of which was Nicklas Bendtner’s miscontrol late on in the game.

Furious

Rather than direct his ire at his players, Arsene Wenger chose to accost referee Busacca as he left the pitch last night.

He was also highly critical of the referee’s performance in his post-match interview, claiming that “in a game of this importance, and with people shouting, the referee must have never played football at all to do what he did.”

I just spoke to UEFA people, and they are shocked as well. You promise a fantastic football match, but what for?

How he did it, frankly, it’s embarrassing for the game.

Robin van Persie also used his post-match interview to direct his anger at Busacca, claiming that the referee’s decision had been “a total joke” as had his performance throughout the evening.

I tried to explain there were 95,000 people jumping up. How can I hear the whistle? He’s been bad all evening, whistling against us. I don’t know why he’s here tonight.

We feel betrayed a bit. When it was 1-1 it was all to play for, and in my opinion this referee killed the game.

UEFA have confirmed this morning that they are waiting to receive the official match reports from Busacca and his assistants before deciding on any action against the North London club.

Tweets

Some of those Arsenal players who did not have an opportunity to speak to the media after the game used social media platform Twitter to air their grievances.

Jack Wilshere and Samir Nasri both directed sarcastic praise in the referee’s direction, while captain Cesc Fabregas held his hands up for a poor performance on what he described as “one of the worst moments of my life.”