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Premier League Round Up (Feb 22-23 2020)


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The Formerly Fat One got the better of the Formerly Special One again as Chelsea thoroughly outplayed Spurs at Stamford Bridge. The 2-1 scoreline was a travesty really as Spurs were never in this game and their goal was a last minute fluke that went in off Rudiger.

 

Chelsea completely dominated and played some lovely football at times. Mount was excellent and they looked a much better side with Giroud leading the line. There are some things he doesn’t do as well as Kevin Abraham, but big handsome Olly is a good player.

 

He’s far too good for the bench role he seems to have occupied for most of his time in England anyway. He’d start regularly for at least 15 teams in this league and he’s one of those players who always seems to play well against us. 

 

He opened the scoring with a crisp finish and Alonso added a beautiful second. That was such a nice goal all round that. Alonso is such a contradiction as he seems to have two or three efforts on goal every game he plays but he’s an absolute liability at the other end. You can't say he's shit, but equally you can't say he's good either. He's both shit and good.

 

You can’t really get away with playing him left back in a four against anyone decent, but you’d want him in the side because of the goal threat he poses. He scored one great goal in this game, he also hit the bar with a brilliant free-kick and was a yard too high with what would have been the goal of the season had it gone in. A right foot volley on the turn from 25 yards.

 

Then three days later he got himself sent off against Bayern in the Champions League, and even before the red card he was getting the absolute run around from the Bayern forwards. Alonso might be the hardest player in the league to evaluate. I think the best way to sum him up is excellent footballer, terrible left back.

 

The result keeps Chelsea’s grip on a top four spot still relatively tight but they’re losing so many games that you can’t be completely sure they’ll hold on. They should do, because in terms of squad talent they’ve definitely got more than anyone other than us and City, but they’re wildly inconsistent and we still don't know yet if Lampard knows what he's doing or if he's a complete chancer.

 

The main talking point after this game had nothing to do with Chelsea’s nice football or Mourinho continuing to turn Spurs into everything they weren’t under Poch though. No, it was VAR. Again.

 

You all know how I feel about VAR and I’d scrap it tomorrow if possible. That being said, VAR should not be criticised for what happened with Lo Celso. If anything, that incident shows exactly why VAR ‘should’ be a good thing. Michael Oliver didn’t see the incident clearly and that’s where the video should come into its own. 

 

Instead, we have some fucking clown watching the screen in Stockley Park and making a monumental fuck up. Cue everyone kicking off about VAR. The technology isn’t the problem, it’s the morons who are using it.

 

Saturday was plagued with shite VAR decisions because the guy who was making those decisions must have been drunk or bribed. How else can you explain the Lo Celso non-red, or the disallowed Bournemouth goal (I’ll get to that later), or De Bruyne getting away with one of the most blatant handballs of the season?

 

They don’t want the refs going to the screens themselves, but if they keep allowing the YTS ref to make it up as they go along on VAR then they deserve every bit of criticism that comes their way. They’re making a fucking mockery of the game with this shit.

 

If you’re going to use VAR, then use it properly and if someone performs as badly as this David Coote jabroni (one just for you there Roger) did, don’t let them near it again. In fact, just ban them from even watching football altogether, let alone refereeing it.

 

Mark Clattenberg was on the radio this week and he was talking about how on field refereeing and VAR requires a completely different skill set and that being good at one doesn’t mean you’ll be good at the other. Sorry, but that’s absolute fucking bollocks.

 

Not everyone can referee a game. I’ll be the first to admit I couldn’t do it even if by some miracle I had the required fitness levels suddenly bestowed upon me. Refereeing is fucking hard. Really fucking hard. Not anybody can do it. I get that.

 

VAR though? I could do that standing on my fucking head so any qualified ref should be able to do it too. Any one of us could look at that Lo Celso stamp and immediately know it’s a red card, yet because of this daft process they have where the on field ref explains his view and unless the VAR vehemently disagrees with it and can say it’s obviously wrong, they stay with the on field call. 

 

Except for the times when they don’t. And that’s the problem. That’s why you get Son sent off for kicking someone in the balls, and Harry Maguire allowed to get away with doing the exact same thing.

 

They’re making this shit needlessly complicated. The VAR ref should have told Oliver that Lo Celso needs to go, or at the very least he should tell him “that looks quite bad, you might wanna take a look yourself and decide what you want to do”. Instead he did nothing. An absolute disgrace really.

 

It didn’t impact the result because Chelsea won anyway, but that can’t be allowed to go unpunished. Lo Celso should be retrospectively banned and so should David Coote, the clueless twat. Apparently he’s a Championship referee. The Championship has my sympathy then, because if he can’t get easy decisions right with the benefit of numerous replay angles then what chance is there when he’s out there in the middle with no help?

 

Of course Mourinho continues to moan about having no strikers and a tired squad. I don’t remember who said it, but I do recall a famous quote from a manager about how if you keep telling players they are tired they will believe it and it gives them a ready made excuse. In Mourinho’s case, the ready made excuse is for him.

 

He’s a busted flush and instead of crying about not having any strikers, why not promote Troy Parrott, the talented kid who people are raving about? What have Spurs got to lose at this point? He says Parrott isn’t ready, and maybe he’s right. But how many times have we seen young strikers who have been thrown in and provided a spark to their team?

 

Playing like this Spurs have no chance of finishing in the top four this season and while Mourinho will continue to deflect all blame away from himself, the fact is they look worse now than they were before he got there.

 

Spurs were so close but they couldn’t take the final step and now they’re a million miles away with a manager who plays a prehistoric style of football. For a ‘shrewd businessman’ Daniel Levy sure does fuck a lot of things up.

 

This is just a teaser, click here to view the full article

 

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  • dave u pinned this topic

One day Nice Guy Eddie is going to completely snap and end up murdering a fourth official with his bare hands. With any luck it will be Martin Atkinson or Anthony Taylor.

 

And if Nice Guy Eddie's really lucky David Coote will on VAR - misses the incident completely, accidentally wipes the tapes and the case won't even get to court.

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2 hours ago, alles ist gut said:

Top, top Eddie Howe analysis there, Dave.

FUN FACT : Español are bottom of the Spanish League right now, so might not be totally committed to progress in Europe.

BONUS FUN FACT : The best team left in the Europa is surely Inter.

 

 

Inter can't be that good when they're jam packed with United rejects.

 

Appreciate the fun facts though, nice one Joel!

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With reference to your comment re Wilder, it surprises me how chippy and thin-skinned a lot of football people are. Lost track of the times I have heard somebody has 'hit back at their critics' and thought , they don't have any critics , they constantly get smoke blown up their arses.

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13 hours ago, tlw content said:

Watford’s new manager bounce seems to have fallen flat now and they’re right back in the shit. We go there this weekend so I’m saying nothing further on them for now.

For this, and this alone, you've not been negged beyond all negs. You know why. 

 

13 hours ago, tlw content said:

BOOM! That’s what you pay your money for right there.

Oh, OK. Can I have mine back then please? 

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Great stuff, as usual.

I decided to watch the United highlights on MotD mainly to take a look at Watford. The stats showed that Unted had lots of shots, but all the best early chances went to Watford who could easily have had a couple of goals before United scored. Also - Martial looked definitely offside for their 2nd on my freeze frame. I know all goals and key incidents are supposed to be going to VAR now - but I'm not so sure after Monday night when Moss was re-starting play without allowing much VAR time, for example when Antonio blocked that free-kick with his arms up. Of course, MotD didn't even question the possible offside in either the commentary or the analysis.

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