Oxlade-Chamberlain had been quick and direct at the outset – Ogbonna was booked for a foul on him; one of three first-half bookings for West Ham – but Arsenal pockmarked their football with loose passes and, for all their possession, they did not create many clearcut chances.
The injury was a particularly cruel one for the 26-year-old Beckham, who had looked forward to this year's World Cup as atonement for a petulant foul of his that got him thrown out of a critical World Cup game against Argentina in 1998, a game that England ended up losing after overtime and penalty kicks.
Arthur may have been the right man at the wrong time, whose South African heritage saw him run foul of the baggy green cohort, who still wield enormous influence, through television commentary booths and board tables, in Australian cricket.
Yet Ellis's enviable reputation did not prevent him falling foul of the Champions' Cup final curse, for what else could explain the fact that a man of such international renown ended up spending 18 years exchanging banter with Eddie Waring on It's A Knockout?
He said that Entwistle ticked all the boxes at the interview stage in highlighting internal issues at the BBC, such as a "silo mentality" and internecine fighting between departments, only to see him fall foul of the very same problems when the Savile and Lord McAlpine issues hit the corporation.
"But the referee didn't see it, he saw the foul of Kompany and he sent him off.
His initial plan was to find work in an advertising agency in San Francisco but he ran foul of the Immigration Service who told him that his visa was good for working in the factory in Houston and nowhere else.
As a young Ugandan judge, he fell foul of Idi Amin's dictatorship, whose thugs beat him up, forced him into exile and later killed his mentor, an archbishop.
When Mr. Allawi, whose party was propelled by millions of Sunni Arab voters, toured neighboring Arab states during the election campaign, his Shiite opponents cried foul, accusing him of encouraging Arab meddling in Iraq's electoral affairs.
