TigerTedd

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.

I do wonder, if Chelsea’s goal had been allowed, they would have had no need to look back at the penalty decision, and therefore wouldn’t have scrutinised Romeros challenge, and he’d probably still be on the pitch. Ironically, spurs are probably cursing var more than Chelsea for disallowing that goal. It could have been 1-1, instead it was 1-1 and a player down.

What do we reckon? 40 goals and a hat trick in the euro final to win England the cup secure him the balón dor. Now messi and Ronaldo are out of the running, the field is open.

I’ll say one thing for derby county, I can’t think of season in the past decade at least when we haven’t had something to play for right to the last game or two of the season. We’ve always been going for the play offs or relegation. There’s no mud table obscurity for us.

I thought this, but that’s why I drew the comparison with haaland. Haaland scored like 50 goals last season. He wasn’t scoring 100* in the bundesliga, so it can’t be that much worse quality. *maybe he was, I haven’t checked.

He’s taking the piss now isn’t he? weird that haaland did so well going in the opposite direction. It’s probably more about moving from an okay team to a world class team. World class players with other world class players around them. These are the results.

Well a big factor in our 11pts was a complete lack of any sort of luck. United just got a huge slice of it for 3pts.

That’s some good statting.

I was travelling during the 11pt season. Didn’t get to touch base that often. I was in the country for the first game, went to pride park. Saw us put in a pretty decent effort to get a point from a 2-2 draw with, I want to say Portsmouth (which makes me realise things could be worse). Then headed off for adventures in Africa and beyond for 18 months. then the only game I got to see while travelling was the win against Newcastle. So as far as I was concerned, it was a pretty good season. 4 points from 2 games.

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. It’s all just a case of perspective, and the blurry lens of history. History might paint a narrative one way or another, but in either case, no one who picks up a weapon can claim innocence. And they certainly can’t claim to be following any known religion.

I heard them say ‘hamas are putting the innocent people in danger by hiding in the refugee camp.’ hamas didn’t see those missiles. Someone on the Israeli side pushed a button. They didn’t have to. they said it doesn’t break any international laws. I have to learn about the laws of armed conflict, and that’s very sketchy. if someone takes a human shield of innocent people, you kind of just have to say ‘bravo, you win this round.’ And think of another way to get them. Not just say ‘f*** it I’ll blow them all up anyway.’ i recently went to the SS museum in Germany. And that is SS levels of retribution. You’re freedom fighters / terrorists killed on of our guys, so we’ll slaughter your whole village. who are the good guys here?!

But anyway. 11pts. That was s*** wasn’t it?

And because he managed to get us past 11 pts.

Find out where the nearest one to your house is. Chances if surviving a caddish arrest drop by roughly 10% for every minute it takes to get an AED involved. And beat in mind you’ll have to get into the box, for which you need a code from 999, which all takes time. But also, don’t wait until the casualty goes man down. There are plenty of symptoms that should prompt you to send someone to fetch an AED straight away, and have the ambulance on the way, ready for if/when they do go man down. And don’t forget your nearest AED May not be in a locked yellow box, it could be behind the reception desk if a local business. All Greene King pubs have them, for example.

When I was younger I used to think that religion was the root cause of war. Now I’ve grown up, I’ve realised that’s not the case at all. The war mongers don’t give a s*** about religion either.

You know what else they’ve got in Gaza? A f*** ton of sunshine. It’s 202-f******-3, why do we still care about oil reserves like the Beverly hill billies?! Why are we still fighting over it?!

Why do we let them get away with it. It’s not like this is a weird, illuminati conspiracy theory at this point. It’s just a known fact. Rich people get richer through war. Its f****** sick that the powerful play games with the lives of ordinary people just trying to live their lives. For what? Ultimately it’s just for money. If Putin was genuinely doing it for the good of his people, then maybe that’s what being a good leader is, or netinyahu, or trump, or whoever the head of hamas is, or any of those dick heads. But they’re not. None of them gives a s*** about what happens to ordinary people. little men playing at being gods. But they’re just little men that everyone hates and the world would be considerably better off without them. I have a bee in my bonnet. I should probably lie down.

I can’t believe it’s 2023, and we’ve got a war in Europe, and Israel vs Palestine. Its 202-f******-3! Surely everyone has learned that no one wins from war by now. How are we just repeating the same s*** over and over again, and not learning any lessons? Who the f*** is in charge, and who the f*** put them in charge? Time for old men to just f*** off, bury their Cold War historical bull s***, and leave the world to the kids to run. We’re suffering existential crises from all angles, never have we needed to put our collective 7 billion heads together more. And yet old men are sending kids to die. And never have we been more divided. Its so depressing.