Highgate

Hard to believe that golf exists when there is w*nking

This seems to be the crux of Wolves' arguments against VAR:
1) Impact on goal celebrations and the spontaneous passion that makes football special.
2) Frustration and confusion inside stadiums due to lengthy VAR checks and poor communication.
3) A more hostile atmosphere with protests, booing of Premier League anthem and chants against VAR.
4) Overreach of VAR's original purpose to correct clear and obvious mistakes, now overanalysing subjective decisions and compromising the game's fluidity and integrity.
5) Diminished accountability of on-field officials, due to safety net of VAR, leading to an erosion of authority on the pitch.
6) Continued errors despite VAR, with supporters unable to accept human error after multiple views and replays, damaging confidence in officiating standards.
7) Disruption of the Premier League's fast pace with lengthy VAR checks and more added time, causing matches to run excessively long.
8 )Constant discourse about VAR decisions often overshadowing the match itself, and tarnishing the reputation of the league.
9) Erosion of trust and reputation, with VAR fuelling completely nonsensical allegations of corruption.
 
Can't argue with too much of that personally.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c4n1ndlknk1o

Ok so there's a small increase in the percentage of correct decisions - and it is only small - but that's not worth all the waiting, the end to spontaneity of celebrations.
When VAR gets it wrong, there's more bitterness than when a lino errs when making a difficult marginal call.
VAR, like everything else the rich clubs do, is killing football. Get rid.

Throw it in the bin.
It's a game, accept the referee's decision.
Mistakes happen, live with them.
Every player on your team will make a mistake.........
Wrong decisions don't ruin football, whining about wrong decisions ruins football.
 
For saying all that, it's going to be amusing watching forest vote to keep var.

I wrestle with this complex issue, as it's just as much an individual's right to choose to make a stand and boycott something as a way of expressing their feelings in a world where we feel increasingly powerless about what our governments do.
Plenty of athletes boycotted the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but then plenty also went along to compete and shook hands with Hitler and did Nazi Salutes. In hindsight - who do we respect more?
So I think I am OK with people choosing not to go/watch/be involved, but it doesn't seem OK to boo and intimidate a young girl just because of her nationality. She is just as powerless to change anything as the rest of us. The direction of protests at her seems pretty shameful

Ignorance mostly drives intolerance, not tolerance. People who are completely ignorant about  Islam are often the most Islamophobic, and people who are ignorant about the religious practices of Jews are often the most antisemitic. In both instances, they often conflate separate issues such as race with religion, for example. Israel/Judaism/Jews, Hamas/Palestinians/Islam, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that those forward slashes might as well be = signs unless a person actually educates themselves.

Totally understand, not your words, I meant to clarify that. Just annoys me that the term is being used all the time for all these anti Isreal protests. One should be allowed to not like Isreal the state, the country, the policies, the regime, without being accused of not liking Jews. Like not liking Saudi Arabian or Iranian policies is not anti-Islamic. Not liking American policies is not anti-Christian. Etc. 

It suits israel and the msm that the terms anti semitism and anti zionism are conflated. In reality I think very few people are anti semitic - largely people don't know enough about Judaism to dislike it and most Jews that people meet are good people. Most people however, me included, do have many issues with the cruel policies of the state of israel and are rightly anti zionist. 

Totally agree. It was the words used in the campaign, not mine. Used deliberately I expect to get an emotional response and more votes.

It's not really countries voting for the neighbours though as such....it's migrant populations voting for their home country. Except the Greece-Cyprus thing....   And people in N.Ireland can vote for Ireland. 
That's why Russia was such a good bet for the win before they were kicked out...they have populations is so many other Eastern European countries.  

100% agree.
Roger Milford. Last game of his career.
Nailed on first place......all other dodgy decisions are playing for the runner up spot.
Still irks 30 years on. Probably the worst day of my life from a footballing perspective.

Best dodgy decision in our favour the penalty against Rotherham in 1986, the most crucial anyway.  
Worst decision, not to give a foul when Roberts elbowed Taylor in the face in 1994...or course that injustice was compounded by Paul Williams' worst attempted clearance in Derby history one second later. Still hurts.

Best dodgy decision in our favour the penalty against Rotherham in 1986, the most crucial anyway.  
Worst decision, not to give a foul when Roberts elbowed Taylor in the face in 1994...or course that injustice was compounded by Paul Williams' worst attempted clearance in Derby history one second later. Still hurts.

Jack Taylor 1976 FA Cup Semi final v Manure when Dave Nish chipped the ball over the defence and ran on to score when the game was 1-0 but disallowed for a mystery player who was supposedly interfering with play. 
Roger Milford in the play off final v Fester not giving a blatant foul on Martin Taylor for their equaliser and letting Steve Walsh and co kick our players all over the park . 

No need for Wembley, just whichever team finished higher in the regular season gets home advantage.

I can survive without the play offs idea, was just a spur of the moment thought to keep most teams interested and something to play for until the very end. 
FWIW i'd have the bottom two automatically relegated and then 15th - 18th battling it out for the final drop. But ultimately i don't think the PL would ever trial something like this.
I'd be intrigued to see how we would reinvigorate the cup competitions. It may be a generational thing but i hold very little feelings towards the cup comps.

The senate passes Ukrainian aid with a dupe majority.
Hopefully the defenders get what they need quickly. Air defence needs to be a huge priority to save Ukrainian civilian lives!

I agree, chuck it out. And put up with the mistakes, isn't that what living with it means?

Except I don't think we'd live with it, anymore than we lived with referee's mistakes before VAR or we are happy to live with the VAR shambles as it's operating now.  Chuck VAR in the bin.  We tried it, fair enough it was worth an attempt, but it's sucking the life out of the game (I'm in complete agreement with you there) as well as creating nearly as many controversies as it solves. 

Who is DCFC Lee? 
I personally don't think Clowes should win it. Just not appropriate,  this award is about ordinary fans.
Clowes deserves all the accolades for what he did (last season, actually) bit in a different arena to this one.

Except I don't think we'd live with it, anymore than we lived with referee's mistakes before VAR or we are happy to live with the VAR shambles as it's operating now.  Chuck VAR in the bin.  We tried it, fair enough it was worth an attempt, but it's sucking the life out of the game (I'm in complete agreement with you there) as well as creating nearly as many controversies as it solves. 

Yeah you can never be sure if the action has been stopped at precisely the right moment or not.  But if you introduce a margin of error, won't the debate just switch to whether the toenail was within the margin of error line or not, rather than whether it was ahead or behind the last defender?  Whatever criterion is used, whether it's offside by any amount, margin or error or 'clear daylight' between the players, the decision will often come down to judgement calls based on millimetres. 
I'd be happy to bin VAR altogether and go back to best guess by the officials.  At least then people could go back to celebrating goals naturally when they occur.  

Currently watching 'Kin', sort-of a Dublin version of 'Peaky Blinders;.
Reminds me very much of some of the characters I used to know in Fagan's pub in Drumcondra. It just needs Bertie Ahern to walk in with Bill Clinton (actually happened when I was in the bar) and I would have been transported back to December 2000.

I appreciate that some think VAR is a step in the right direction the above is the argument in a nutshell for me. Is the 'correct by a toenail' forensic approach worth it when it is seemingly so flawed/ambiguous on tight decisions anyway ? The original explanation/justification was that VAR was essentially there to correct big errors and injustices. I'm just not convinced 'drawing lines' on a screen and spending sometimes several minutes making at best dubiously 'accurate' decisions on the tightest of tight calls, is really addressing the problem.

The crushing of the spontaneity of goal celebrations for frankly impossible to call decisions in a fast moving and highly emotional spectator sport is (IMHO) simply not worth the sacrifice as a spectacle, though I appreciate that many wouldn't agree.