Football talking points

First topic message reminder :

Rather than hijack the "which team do you support" thread where some of these are being talked about...

Some of the events of the weekend that are getting people talking

1) Mario Balotelli: plenty to say about him in general but specifically the alleged stamp on Scott Parker and his subsequent charge by the FA

2) Lescott's elbow on Kaboul(?) - FA say no charge to answer

3) Conspiracy theories in general about Man City!

4) Wenger's decision to take Chamberlain off and put Arshavin on - and Van Persie's reaction

5) Peter Crouch and the "eye-gouge"

6) Harry Redknapp and the tax-dodging allegations and court case

Discuss!

Or we do a Leeds/Sheff Weds/Charlton and the only way is more down!

1987, a mere 5 years after winning the European Cup - impressive huh??

Its funny how things happen like that. I remember that European Cup final so well and so many players in that team. Morley, Shaw, Cowans. Always thought Gary Shaw was the Paul Way of football, a star that shone brightly for not very long.
Cowans is one of my all time favourite players, utter quality and so under rated its untrue.
Im not saying you would bounce straight back but chances are you will or at the very least challenge, anyway it wont happen, I think you will finish 3 point clear of it all.

I was too young to remember the 82 final (i ws 2!) but i do remember the back end of Cowans career and he was quality even then. Big nose though!

I used to really enjoy watching Tony Daley. He was my first 'favourite' player!

To be fair it was a pretty spawny backs to the wall win but who cares.

MustPuttBetter wrote:

I used to really enjoy watching Tony Daley. He was my first 'favourite' player!

Tony Daley! Brings back memories... he was seriously quick. I remember Villa almost winning the league in the season before the 1990 world cup in Italy. I guess that is how Graham Taylor got the England job and how David Platt got into the England squad and big money transfers to Italy. Didn't that team also have Dwight Yorke? Maybe Dean Saunders too, or was that a couple of years later?

I've got nothing against Villa, I just think any McLeish team deserves to be relegated for bringing the game into disrepute!

I can't argue with the last point Ray!!

Daley was seriously quick! I'm pretty sure he went to Italia 90 but i don't remember him playing at all.
Platt left Villa for Bari on the back of the world cup for.............£5.5m! At the time that was big money indeed - Villa's record sale - but seems tiny now.

Dwight Yorke came to the fore a little later. Signed to be a left winger!
Saunders joined a year or two after Italia 90 and kinda crossed the two periods. He was seriously excellent for Villa

Saunders was just a class player basically. If you look at his career though he moved a lot , in fact longest stay was at Villa and that was only about a 100 odd games. Had about a dozen clubs in the end I think.

He did seem to move around a lot.
He is a very funny guy and i wonder if he had the sort of personality where he would just get bored

When I think of Dean Saunders I think of that open goal he missed!

Strange really because other than that I remember him as a really good finisher.

So FA Cup Semi finals weekend. A Merseyside derby and a London derby. Let's hear who you want to win as opposed to who you think will win.

Everton v Hooftheball
Giving this one away slightly but really despise Hooftheball now so it is Everton for me (sorry Digs)

Spuds v Chelski
If it was possible for both of them to lose then that would be my option but as there is going to be a winner for me, Chelski. Would love to see the Spuds season implode after all that promise.

Agree with you on both 1GG - not only are they the ones I WANT to win but I think our choices both have good chances

Just because its Friday.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtJeN96-6fw

He didn't really score a scruffy goal did he. Some real gems in there.

Two candidates for disgrace of the week already

Another outrageous dive from Ashley Young to gain a penalty against his old side - why isn't he pilloried as much as the foreign divers?

And did anyone else see Neil Lennon rush onto the pitch at the end of the Scottish semi-final to confront the referee? He deserves a long ban for that

He did dive...but it was a pen anyway.

Why do you say it was a Pen anyway Digs? Yes there may have been a little contact but as a few people pointed out after last week's dive, contact alone doesn't mean necessarily a foul.

Yes there was contact but I can't say it was a Pen in a million years and all he did was make himself look a pr!ck

Football is a contact sport (despite the authorities sometimes trying to make it otherwise).

Just seen Chelsea go 4-1 up - probably a fair result overall but there have again been a couple of contentious decisions - the ball was never over the line for the 2nd goal and Cech should have walked also

I can't believe I'm taking a Totteringham stance on the issues but Chelsea probably do deserve it overall despite two bad decisions

Chekskis old boys not quite shot in the paddock yet. Good weekend for maligned players in the FA cup.

It's not contact sport on the penalty area. He left his leg and caught the player, cest la vie, he should know better.

But he didn't leave his leg there he was trying to take it away an young threw his leg at the defender. He will keep doing it... The fa had a chance after last week's dive but bottled it. . Qpr appealed the red card and the fa upheld it.

Well in that case Ray shows how hard it is because I never saw him try to pull his leg away. Pen all day long for me.

It is hard to get the balance right with these as the players make it hellishly difficult and it happens so quickly. Any contact is not a foul, a foul is sufficient contact to prevent your opponent from controlling the ball without winning the ball yourself. Young could have stayed up last week and this week. I didn't think either incident merited a foul. It is a bit unfair to single him out as a diver, because 99% of pros do this. He is very good, very quick and gets into these positions more than most. He is as much a diver as any other player imo. How rare do you say to yourself or mates 'he should have gone down', much rare now than 20 years ago.

I'll appreciate i'm biased here but.......

I can't see how the Young dive was ever a penalty. I should caveat this with the fact that he used to dive ALL the time when at Villa. I used to acknowledge it and joke about it but never moaned about it so this isn't really a whinge, just my opinion on whether it was a foul.

Yes there was contact but it's blatantly obvious that not every piece of contact of a football pitch is a foul. Surely a foul is when one player makes contact with another player in an attempt to stop him getting to the ball. This is not what happened here.
I think the key point is that Clark was a good 2 or 3 feet out of the line between Young and the ball. Young moved the ball inside and then ran out of his way to make contact with Clark. At no point did Clark make a movement towards Young or throw his leg out in anyway. He was simply stood still nowhere near the line Young had to take to get to the ball.
So yes there was contact but who's to say that's not a foul on Clark?? If i charge into a player anywhere else on the pitch that's a foul against me no?

The long and the short of it is, if that honestly is a penalty, i'm glad i now know. Next time i play, if i'm struggling in possession i can just move the ball and run into the nearest player, chuck myself on the ground and it's job done. I never knew it was that easy. It'll be like british bulldog with people try to dodge me as i come flying at them looking for my penalty.

At least we didn't get stitched up as much as Spurs though!!

Personally Ive no idea why people get so worked up about diving. Defenders make so many fouls during the course of a match its untrue. Sometimes they result in a free kick but not always and clearly the defender is trying to get away with cheating and hoping he gets away with it. The amount of stuff centre backs get away with during corners is laughable, but nothing ever gets given against them. Its all deliberate and cynical and practised cheating.
But an attacker exagerates when he goes to ground and its suddenly like a crime against the game. Why ? In my book its no different to any of the other countless little deliberate infringements that go on constantly during a match. And in Youngs case (IMO) it was an exageration of an original offence against him, clearly some people dont agree on that view in this particular instance but equally plenty of others will.

I'm not sure anyone's particularly worked up are they?

You're correct Digs, the stuff that goes on during corners is just as bad and should be treated just as harshly.

I'm not sure fouls that aren't given is quite the same, depending on the circumstance. If i go into a tackle genuinely trying to win the ball but i get it wrong and commit a foul, yet the ref doesn't give it - that's not the same as deliberately trying to con the ref.

In my opinion in the Young case there was no original offence to be exagerrated. You can't just go out of your way to make contact with someone else, despite them having made no attempt to make contact with you, and that be a foul to you. In other words what i'm saying is, you cannot be the instigator of the contact between you and another player and have it be a foul in your favour. That's a farce

But as you say, it's all opinion and that's just mine

Not meaning anyones getting worked up on here, but for instance on the old 606 there are a few threads about diving. Its not like there arent as I said lots of other offences going on. It does seem to me there is a real stigma around divers and diving for not real good reason....well for no more than any other offence anyway.
On another topic funny to see Mr Model Professional Scottie Parker go mental yesterday, shows it can happen to anyone. In fact its quite funny full stop to see Spurs season melting away.

Spurs are having a real meltdown, although i thought they played quite well yesterday but were beaten by 2 worldies and a non goal! Unlucky!

Cudicini looked awful and King has started to look like it might all be a bit much for him unfortunately.
Drogba's goal was outrageously good!

You have to wonder if, at 2-0, Spurs would rather have had the penalty and played against 10 men for the remaining 30 mins rather than just playing on to allow the goal?

I agree with Diggers as i'm sick of seeing defenders running around holding an opponents shirt, they may as well hold hands. The last world cup saw FIFA state that shirt tugging will be dealt with harshly ....... worse than ever because ref's don't uphold the letter of the law, only when it suits them. The Young dive wasn't a penalty and neither was Derry's, but yesterdays ref should have awarded a penalty for Man Utd for handball, but the ref waved it away because he allowed the earlier one.

If we have to put up with ref's then they should try and get it right, but the amount of stuff that goes unpunished or is punished and shouldn't have been, or goals not allowed or given .... plenty of talk about technology, but I would love to see the day when the match is refereed from upstairs and instead of a whistle a hooter is blown with a screen showing the players what's been given. Much quicker, no arguing because who they going to argue with and any punch up would mean a copper on the field arresting or cautoning players.

Refs are crap and spoil the game these days

I have to say, whilst the standard of refereeing certainly does seem to be getting worse, i don't think football would be half as popular a sport were it not for these incorrect decisions.
I'm not sure having the correct decisions made every time would help with the sports appeal to Joe Normal

I dont think the reffing is getting worse, I think its the fact that every minute decision is gone over a million times by the pundits and the fans who have video evidence and a host of interactive forums to chat about it on. Actually maybe that does make teh reffing worse because oft he pressure it adds.
I really dont care about the decisions, they are all part of the game. You have to accept that the ref tries to do a good job and let them get on with it. When the game is over thats that as far as Im concerned.

I do think, and of course this is purely subjective, that the refereeing appears to have gotton worse over the last say 5 years, and decisions have been poured over for all of that period

It would be odd if the reffing is worse now, they are on the whole younger, fitter and better trained and better paid so there should be a wider pond to choose good refs from as its a proper career now for the best ones.
I dont think the constant muddying of the waters by the FA helps in regard to guidleines, and some of the offside laws now are pretty open to debate.

Yes the offside law is certainly responsible for a lot of bad decisions - though the couple of high profile ones recently don't seem related to the muddy areas of the law - they were jut bad decisions plain and simple

I'd also like to see the handball law clarified

It's my belief that a handball should be given if EITHER there is intent OR advantage gained

So an accidental handball (even though not deliberate) should still be given if the defending side has benefited from the offense. Deliberate handballs should continue to be penalised with cards, but obviously not if it is accidental

So someone who deliberately handles the ball should be penalized and subject to a card - if there was no real advantage despite the intent then perhaps yellow; if intent AND significant advantage, then a red

No intent and no advantage - no offense. No intent but some advantage - free kick or penalty but no card

It is odd that the reffing is worse now but for sure it would seem that more high profile mistake are being made these days.

As you say, the rules do not help at all but things like 'did it cross the line?' really haven't gotten any more difficult.

I do think players have learned how to pressure the referee more effectively and no doubt they probably feel that pressure. You see a lot of them appealing for nonsense decisions.
There was one yesterday were van der Vaart had a shot and Terry blocked it on the line and van der Vaart (who was a fair distance away) had his hand straight up that it had crossed the line, running after the ref. He can't have had any idea whether it had - and it hadn't - but he appealed like his life depended on it all the same.
Near the end Defoe wiped out a Chelsea player (can't recall who) from behind. He knew it was a foul. He didn't argue it but still took the time to turn around and call the ref c*nt on the way past.

If somehow that sort of thing could be stamped out we might find the referees getting more decisions correct

The one single thing I would change is the lack of respect shown to refs. And it could be so simple, skippers only allowed to approach the ref as per Union, you swear at a ref you get a card.

diggers wrote: The amount of stuff centre backs get away with during corners is laughable, but nothing ever gets given against them. Its all deliberate and cynical and practised cheating.

This and diving drive me nuts. The most annoying thing about shirt pulling is that it is so blatant and in the Uefa Cup for instance they have two extra assistants to watch this area and I have never heard of an occasion when they have awarded a penalty for it. I would like it if they made a big clamp down on it for the Euros. The solution is to give a penalty every time, even if there is 6 a game for it. The message will soon get out. Unfortunately diving is a craftier art and harder to spot.

Arsenal not too gracious in defeat tonite, I do like seeing Wenger getting agitated, he loves a tantrum. Not sure why the fans were booing Wigan at the end, would have been nicer for them to applause a fantastic effort.

Wigan pick up unexpected points tonight. Could be above Villa by the end of Saturday leaving us in 16th place.....

Any big 6 point games to play MOB ?

Villa play Bolton and West Brom, both biggies and ones they can't afford to lose. They also play Spurs which is an almost guaranteed loss. I can't see them scoring or keeping clean sheets against anyone. I don't think it looks good

diggers wrote:Arsenal not too gracious in defeat tonite, I do like seeing Wenger getting agitated, he loves a tantrum. Not sure why the fans were booing Wigan at the end, would have been nicer for them to applause a fantastic effort.

You're right Digs - not very gracious after a bad defeat. I can only think the booing was frustration as what they must've seen as terrible time wasting by Wigan who seemed intent on eating up time from about the 30th minute!

I'm really hoping that Wolves, QPR and Blackburn all take the big drop, because they all have one thing in common: New owners with big ideas who know nothing about football. Blackburn sack big Sam and let Keane take over and we've seen what he's had to put up with all season. WArnock is sacked by the new QPR owner after getting them into the premiership on a shoestring. The former owners wouldn't give him any money until they had sold the club, so the poor bloke had 2-weeks to try and assemble a squad before the season started. He had to do a supermarket sweep and grab anyone available, and had no time to bed them in. Tony Fernandez sacked him so that he could bring Mark Hughes in, whos done much, much worse than Warnock and has managed to get them into the drop zone. McCarthy sacked by Wolves after getting them up a few seasons ago, and keeping them in a league they had no business to stay in. He did wonders there and had a great relationship with Jez Moxey, but the new idiot takes over and thinks he can do better without big Mick. Chumps have been battered every game since. When will these sycophants realise that owning a football club is about looking after the community and the fans. Its not all about making money because nobody makes real money in the premiership as its run by vain fools in the main.

Can't really argue with you there Doc.

As a QPR fan I want us to stay up, but I was sad to see Warnock go. I understand why he was sacked but I feel he should have been given the whole season... his hands were tied last summer and a fair crack in the Prem was the least he deserved after winning the Championship last year. There was a lot of press about "moneybags" QPR when we won the Championship last year, but the reality is Briatore / Ecclestone were very conservative with the cheque book, and once they had decided to sell the club they stopped all transfer activity, so Warnock deserves a lot of credit for what he achieved.

I do think Tony Fernandez has his heart in the right place, he was just a little rash with the dismissal of Warnock. He's by no means a billionaire in the Abramovich league but has put his money where his mouth is.

Doc wrote:
When will these sycophants realise that owning a football club is about looking after the community and the fans.

Sorry this is only bit I where I disagree. Football is an entertainment business, the fans are not "club members", they are are paying customers. Buying a football club is a vanity project, it's not going to be a profitable business but is a tool for self-promotion, self-indugence and marketing of other products. When a billionaire buys a football club he can choose to spend or not, that's his perogative, I don't think the followers of the team have any right to demand that a chairman spends millions of his own money on improving the team.

I wasnt sad to see either Warnock or McArthy sacked, in fact I laughed out loud when MM went. These guys have been paid a lot of money at the various clubs they have been at and usually they have come up short in the Premiership. I get sick of the usual band of managers getting the appointments, shame its Hughes who got the QPR one as its part of the same cycle along with the likes of Bruce.
Id much prefer clubs to take a punt on younger managers or ex players, we might get some fresh English blood coming through with a chance of taking over the bigger clubs.
Lets face it football managers on the whole, at least when they are in work, are complete tools most of the time anyway and hardly deserving of much sympathy.

I too was not sad to see Warnock or McCarthy go.
The McCarthy sacking was harsh but the Warnock one i can kind of understand. QPR would almost certainly have got relegated with him at the helm. As it turns out they may well do with Hughes at the helm but i can see why they wanted to try something else. I was genuinely pleased to see Warnock ditched. Nasty piece of work

Diggers, guys like Warnock, Allerdyce and McCarthy are all people who have never had the benefit of mega money. They've all been a success at what they're there for without said cash. So in some respects I see these types of managers as better than some of the so called top managers.

Warnock's a promotion machine but every time he goes into the prem he can't compete due to the quality of player he has at his disposal. This season he was very unlucky to be sacked. All 3 of them are characters that many find dull, gobby, whinging gobshytes etc, but they've all done a job and been very good at it. Wolves should have gone down the season they came up, but MM somehow managed to keep them up.

Big Sam made himself look stupid recently, with his comment about him doing better at Real Madrid than the manager at the time. He was silly saying it, but it could be true as he's never had the chance to show anyone what he could do if given the resource. Plus he's had to set his teams up in a certain style as he hasn't had the quality, which makes him be known as a hoofball manager. Leeds fans are saying the same thing about Warnock now, but forget that QPR played the best flowing football in the championship last season, and on a shoe-string

MustPuttBetter wrote:I too was not sad to see Warnock or McCarthy go.
The McCarthy sacking was harsh but the Warnock one i can kind of understand. QPR would almost certainly have got relegated with him at the helm. As it turns out they may well do with Hughes at the helm but i can see why they wanted to try something else. I was genuinely pleased to see Warnock ditched. Nasty piece of work

Haha! Good old Colin. Always been Mr Popular. He's had a long history of winding people up... but to be fair he has mellowed in recent years. He was a regular on MOTD2 a couple of seasons ago where he showed that he wasn't full of spite and bitterness. I think he's been fairly gracious regarding his exit at QPR. I guess most people stop being stroppy in their 20's but Warnock had to wait til his 60's.

Not sure I agree with all of that Doc. For a start McCarthy did not do a good job at Sunderland and is not fondly remembered there. He took us up but lost the tem and the fans in the Premiership season.
Swansea and Wigan have proved you dont have to play hoofball, even on a budget, so Im not sure that Fat Sam can be cut quite as much slack as you have for him. He adopts a certain style even when his clubs are comparitively the bigger spenders in the Championship, and dont think he would play expansive football however much cash he was given personally.
Warnock did get QPR playing well but that was probably the exception to the rule in his career.
Ultimately they are stereotypes of the typical football manager, suret hey have done OK at certain times, but they have also been paid and paid off handsomely whilst doing so. I wouldnt miss any of the ones you mention if they never managed a club again.

Doc wrote:Diggers, guys like Warnock, Allerdyce and McCarthy are all people who have never had the benefit of mega money. They've all been a success at what they're there for without said cash. So in some respects I see these types of managers as better than some of the so called top managers.

Warnock's a promotion machine but every time he goes into the prem he can't compete due to the quality of player he has at his disposal. This season he was very unlucky to be sacked. All 3 of them are characters that many find dull, gobby, whinging gobshytes etc, but they've all done a job and been very good at it. Wolves should have gone down the season they came up, but MM somehow managed to keep them up.

Big Sam made himself look stupid recently, with his comment about him doing better at Real Madrid than the manager at the time. He was silly saying it, but it could be true as he's never had the chance to show anyone what he could do if given the resource. Plus he's had to set his teams up in a certain style as he hasn't had the quality, which makes him be known as a hoofball manager. Leeds fans are saying the same thing about Warnock now, but forget that QPR played the best flowing football in the championship last season, and on a shoe-string

Well said Doc

Just to support your argument, about 6 months ago Warnock said that he had waited his entire career for the opportunity to manage a squad of players whom he could get to play attractive football. He had always been pragmatic enough to realise what was going to be the most effective style to get the job done with the players available. QPR played some brilliant football in the first half of this season, patiently retaining the ball and then really entertaining counter-attacking stuff. I can think of narrow defeats to Man City (3-2) and 0-0 against Newcastle where we were brilliant but just needed a finisher. The irony of course is that as soon as he got the opportunity to bring in re-inforcements he was sacked.

We will never know what managers like Allardyce or Warnock could do with a Man U or Real Madrid. It's quite likely they would struggle to motivate the superstars. Look at Redknapp. For many years, he was unable to get the best from world class players like Paulo Futre and Disco Dani.

Doc, i'm not sure i agree re Sam.

When he was at Bolton i thought he would do a decent job given a chance at a big club and i remember him saying that he only plays long ball football as that best suited the players at his disposal. Fair enough.

But he didn't do a great job at Newcastle which was his chance at a bigger club and it certainly is not the case that the players West Ham have in the league they're in are best suited to the long ball crap he is still playing there. If ever there was a chance to show he could also get a side to get it down and play it was his current job and yet the style he plays there couldn't be further from that and is the reason a great deal of West Ham fans would like to see the back of him even if he does get them up.

The jury is well and truly out on him and i'm actually very very pleased he never got the England job