TigerTedd

Now you’re getting it. Welcome to the thread.

They’ve had some poor results this season, and the big talking point is how poor they’ve been generally, but on top of that, the wins they’ve had have generally been poor performances or by the skin of their teeth too. Starting with Wolves in the first game, which they should’ve lost, but some how won. Beating Copenhagen at home, they should’ve lost that one, but for a penalty save. Loads of games where they should’ve been out of sight but winning with a last minute goal. They’ve scraped together a reasonable amount of points, but they’ve been awful. I don’t think they’ve had one good performance all season.

As far as I know he’s not got the keys to my house, so I’m not sure what it means.

That is a stirring speech. Almost makes me want to die on the moon and have you all looking up at me. Sign me up.

Must stay solemn. Must resist the urge to make some comment about most forest fans not being able to string a coherent sentence together, pot, kettle, etc. Can’t do it, too tempting.

They’ve always been a thing.

I remember when Arsenal fielded the first starting 11 with not a single British person. Not being xenophobic, but that didnt seem right at all.

VAR, money, the premier league, diving, administrations, FFP, European super league, stupid offside and handball rule changes. But the final nail in the coffin is Aramco becoming FIFAs biggest sponsor. Get ready for every World Cup becoming a winter World Cup in an Arab state. Saudi teams turning up in the champions league and tearing it up with overpaid galácticos. once they (and be ‘they’ I don’t mean ‘the Arabs’ I mean the infinitely rich money men) own FIFA, which they effectively do now, then the jumpers for goal posts game of football that we invented has gone forever I think. Maybe it’s always been this way. Since Abramovic and Man City, and it’s unfair to pick out the Saudis. Why shouldn’t they get involved? But this definitely feels like the beginning of the end. Or maybe the end of the end, the beginning of the end started a while ago.

referring to the thread I’m about to start.

So who gets to sue Leicester? That wasn’t the year they beat us was it? Could we sue villa? But apparently we were also cheating at that time. Eventually it just becomes like cycling and it’s a case of who can cheat best.

He’s not even American. Why would he be a us agent?

That won’t be anything to do with Chelsea and city. That’ll be because they’re tuning in to watch the Rams.

I don’t mean to show off but… ✅

By ‘bigger things’ he meant that one day he’ll move on to notts county.

Daft question, why do you think he’s hanging out here?

You would’ve thought Luton were the best bet. You’re not going to get many worse teams with less investment than Luton. But even their making a decent go of it. Over 38 games against premier league opposition, I bet most league 1 or 2 teams would win a couple. It would be interesting to see stats on that based on the last 38 cup ties between say Walsall and premier league teams. I bet if you converted them into points they’d still have more than 11. Its embarrassing that we were supposedly premier league standard, and couldn’t even muster more than one cup set level result (which wouldn’t have been a cupset, as we were supposed to be on the same level). every dog has their day against premier league opposition at some point. But out of 38 attempts that season, we had one good day. That’s kind of pathetic.

That’s not a bad legacy. ”We should all be more B4.” Stick that on a banner, cos it’s bloody true. A bit of unwavering positivity goes a long way. This a real kick in the nuts. We all knew he had health problems based on his posts here, but I had no idea they were so serious. He was so positive and passionate about everything, even, it turns out, in the face of his own problems. Jesus, he had every reason to be down, more than most, but it seems absolutely nothing could bring him down. Just imagine a world where we were all a bit more B4.

That’s why an appeals system makes more and more sense. The power is in the hands of the players then. Ref’s make their normal decisions, but if it’s a wrong decision, the players can appeal. If, after the game, it was revealed to be a wrong decision, the players only have themselves to blame for not appealing. They appeal anyway, but with no formalised on the spot appealing system, appealing just becomes hounding the referee, abusing him, and then getting yourself booked. Formalise that process, and everyone’s happy.

But wouldn’t it have been good to just be able to use the technology to rift those rare wrongs. VAR itself isn’t evil, it’s just being massively overused to forensically check every decision. Having said that, there’s an argument to say, once the dust has settled, moments like the hand of god become part of the folklore and history of football. Without moments like that, would football be more sanitised, and have less historical moments to remember?

You’ve got it. The whole ball to hand thing was always so easily decided in the studios afterwards, especially with ex footballers involved, and it felt like VAR was just going to be that, but during the game. That’s what it should be. And it would work well. Bug the body shape thing came in at the same time. It’s trying to make it more black and white but it leads to ridiculously harsh decisions. Id accept an accidental handball as an offence if it genuinely stopped a goal from going in. But it doesn’t take a long time to decide if a handball is luis Suarez making a save any keeper would be proud of, or Henry nudging it in with his hand. Everyone was pretty much in agreement that those were the kind of decisions that shouldn’t be allowed to be missed. But what annoys me now is when VAR gets involved and their we’re not complaints in the first place. Like who the f*** asked you to get involved. VAR is checking for a handball here. No one appealed for a hand ball. Why are you getting involved? But now the players have cottoned onto the idea that VAR will give all sorts of stupid crap, so now they do appeal when before they wouldn’t have bothered. And players making the TV signal becomes common place. If they’re going to do that anyway, I say formalise it, and stamp out any spurious claims, and VAR getting involved when it’s not needed. If later analysis says there was a hand ball, then the players have no one to blame but themselves for not appealing. The control is in their hands.

I’ve been really tempted to call into talk sport, but I know they’ll never give me the airtime for all this. Or a strongly worded letter to the FA. There are a few simple fixes that would solve all the problems with VAR. and problems with football in general. They’re right in front of us, it’s like the FA are purposefully trying to ruin football when they have the power to fix it. So here we go: Offside: Think about why the offside rule exists. It’s to strikers handing out with the goal keeper all game. So if a ball is knocked forward, it can be a fair foot race between an attacker and defender. A t-shirt sleeve offside gives no one any advantage. Problem: VAR takes ages to decide which body part is offside. Fix: Put chips in the middle of every players boot. That’s where the line is drawn. It’s fair for everyone. And it would be as instant as goal line technology then. It’s black and white, no need for VAR. I think we can all agree that goal line technology is a good thing, and has very rarely gone wrong. Offside should be as black and white and fair and instant as goal line technology. People will still moan about a mm offside, but at the end of the day, if you give them a metre leeway, people will still moan when they are 1.001 m offside. So the line has to be drawn somewhere. Handball: Again, why does the handball rule exist? To prevent people from purposefully handling the ball. A ricochet into the hand from half a yard away has no intent. Based on intent, there should be very few handball penalties. There aren’t many footballers who can actually think quick enough to use their hand on purpose, it’s not their instinct or how their muscle memory has been changed. Luis Suarez on the goal incidents are few and far between. Problem: They’ve tried to introduce some black and white guidelines into the rule, to make a refs life easier, and take personal interpretation out of it as much as possible. So now intent has nothing to do with it, and it’s about body shape and all this rubbish. Solution: this is where VAR should be coming into its own. By looking at freeze frames you can better judge intent. Look at where the players is looking, how their arm is moving. Before VAR pundits would do this all the time. It’s impossible to make that judgement in real time. But with replays it’s easier. It’ll always still be open for some debate. But it can be far more clear cut. They introduced new handball rules at the same time as introducing VAR, not thinking that VAR negates the need for these daft new rules because intent can be judged in almost real time far easier now. People blame VAR for a lot of the issues these days, but often VAR is accurately interpreting the rules. It’s just new rules that are daft. Red Cards / Penalties / Diving: Problem: VAR sticks it’s oar in at every opportunity and ruins the game. It’s almost like they’re trying to justify their existence. Ideally we’d never see them, but then people would start asking questions about why we need the expense. Solution: each team gets one cricket or tennis style appeal, controlled by the captain. If it’s upheld, they get it back Picture the scene, a player goes down like a ton of bricks. Player: Ref, he elbowed me, send him off. Ref: Okay, I didn’t see it, how strongly do you feel about it? do you want to use your appeal? Shall we go to the screen together? Player: Umm, no, you’re okay, ok second thought, maybe it wasn’t that bad. Ref (turns to accused player): okay, would you like to use your appeal and we’ll see if he dived. Baring in mind he’s on a yellow card already. Diving player gets sent off. Justice is served. VAR was only meant to get involved during those hand if his moments. The Henry handball for example. Those glaringly the obvious mistakes that somehow the whole stadium sees, but the ref doesn’t. That are replayed for years and years. When it was first introduced, I was excited because I thought this is what it would help prevent. But they’ve made such a ridiculous mess of it. Giving players the right to appeal would stop stupid crowding of the ref. Stops diving and false claims. It can all be far more civilised. Referee, how did you not see that. Sorry, I can’t be everywhere at once, do you want me to have another look. Yes please. Easy peasy. Penalty. Ref, he dived, there was no contact. Looked like contact from here, but you’re best placed to know if there was contact or not, do you want to appeal and I’ll take a closer look? Or the other way around. Ref he fouled me as that corner came across. I didn’t see it, shall we go have a look, do you want to use your appeal? Rant over. Now how do I get this to the FA. They screwed it up so badly, I honestly think there’s some sort of agenda. Even if it is just to justify the expense of var by using it as much as possible.

People keep talking about how they will be back, maybe this is the start of their come back, or that is. But they’ve not got a good given right to be at the top table. Football goes in cycles. And eventually even the mightiest fall. It’s seems to happen when an iconic manager leaves or wanes. Ask Preston, they were big once, when are they going to make their big comeback. What United have going for them is a lot of reputation in the bank from those halcyon days. But how long before they become Everton, and no one cares about their past anymore?

We’ll, you can normally find him in the early bath if you can’t see him in the pitch.

Romero gonna Romero.