gkmacca

One only needs to read the newspaper comments sections after the reports of the Luton statement to see how widespread is the poison. What the FA is doing is as reactive as a game of whack-a-mole. What's needed is a rigorously organised national education campaign and a coherent multi-media clamp-down on instances of this ignorance and hate. Otherwise it'll go on and on.

They are fans for whom the chant 'Is this a library?' probably has real empirical force; they genuinely wouldn't be able to recognise a library.

Absolute shitheads. I remember chatting to few people whose home clubs used play Luton - every time their fans came to these normally quiet little towns, the riot squads would suddenly be out in force. They've had an appalling reputation for years and years, and this kind of statement shows the rot goes all the way up to the top.

Yes, I think Trent is going backwards in terms of mentality - he started very disciplined and focussed but now he swaggers about like he's been given the licence to do whatever the hell he wants. He did hit two or three gorgeous long passes yesterday but he also persists in overhitting diagonal balls over the defence and out of touch, and he keeps drifting off to the left seemingly on a whim. And Konate is looking shattered whenever he plays in the same team. The whole game was painful to watch. Presumably we would have trained on a pitch measured out the same as Luton's - that's what we used to do when they were last in the same division - but we didn't play like we had. I must say I can't remember a team have so much luck in one game - every single rebound seemed to land at the feet of one or other of their players, but we were depressingly thick in our decision-making.

Cruyff had a nice idea when sometimes playing teams that were as negative as Luton. He'd have his team start the same way - just act as if to say, 'Come on, then, attack us, we're just parking the bus, too'. It short circuited the other team by presenting them with a mirror image. After about fifteen minutes they'd completely lost their way and then Cruyff's team would snap into action and batter them. I've always liked that because it destroys the idea that there's something really clever about playing that way, just like Carra and Co were raving about yesterday.

We've not done too much wrong. That set up from their side is just hell to deal with. When the conditions are like this, on a pitch that size, you've just got to keep the ball moving to feet and get cute with it. Mo may as well be on the bench when he doesn't fancy dribbling with the ball, because he's no space to do anything else. Gomez is okay defending but he's only going to play the ball backwards when he's in a more advanced position, and Luton know it. We need to be much smarter in the second half, but christ this kind of team is torture to watch..

If we'd released a statement like that we'd be savaged by the London hacks.

Truly, Madley, weepy.

One thing that has to happen to VAR is a strict time limit for decisions - whether those decisions are right or wrong, the process just cannot be allowed to eat into the playing time (besides the impact of players and spectators, the TV people don't want their own schedules disrupted). A time limit is suggested anyway in the phrase 'clear and obvious' - seeing clear and obvious things doesn't take very long at all. So a one minute limit should happen IMO. This would at least force the operators to stop being obsessed with treating ambiguous issues as their business - because they would know they wouldn't have the time to do so. A one minute limit would make them do what the bloody thing is supposed to do, and for the rest of the game STFU.

They always had more class than the Stones, as well as way, way, more talent, so it's no surprise that, whereas the Stones video resembled a Russell Brand daydream, this one was simply very touching. I loved the demo and love the finished song.

Andre: 'But today my dream is to live day by day here in Fluminense'. That's not really a dream, mate.

The great thing - we follow up from shots. That's not often happened in recent years, but now it's instinct, which is great.

It's not, I saw it with my own eyes - he wasted kick after kick. I heard some pundit talking the other day about his 'brilliant free kick in the last minute against Greece' - he omitted to recall the multiple free kicks earlier in the game that he wasted with abysmal shots. This is how myths develop. People edge further and further away from the actual historical facts. In twenty years people will read about Beckham and picture some kind of sorcerer who could score at will.

This is genius:

Yes, although they train with them, too, so they should know what they do and how they need hitting. Beckham's 'prowess' was a triumph of PR over the naked eye. He'd balloon kick after kick over the bar, or hit it straight at the wall, or bend it wide. Then, after wasting chance after chance (while the likes of Gerrard were reduced to spectator status) he'd finally get one on target and the media would hail him as a genius. I'm not sure what his stats were in terms of free kicks and goals but I bet other players had a better ratio. Roberto Carlos was another who benefitted from the memory of a couple of great long range kicks - most of his shots were wild misses, and yet he still played on that aura to monopolise free kicks for club and country. Trent is better when the kick is further out, rather than when he tries for the closer whipped 'up and over' shots like on Sunday, but I always think the team should make full use of a number of players for free kicks, depending on the distance and angle. Trent's recent interview where he said he was keeping Dom off free kick 'duties' might have been partly a joke, but you can see during games that he pretty much means it, which is a mistake IMHO.

Most of the managers who do so just do it as some stupid symbolic gesture - it's happened in evening games, too. They always stand there smirking as if they're an evil genius.

Mark King as Nosferatu.

Trent is still acting a bit Beckham-like. He's not so brilliant at free kicks that he should demand to take every one of them, especially now Dom's in the side.

Steve Cooper is a strangely irritating bloke. Whenever an opponent gets the 'inspired' idea to make us attack the Kop in the first half, they always lose my respect - aside from the fact that, if they ever bothered to check, they ought to know that it's hardly Kryptonite to us - we usually win anyway - it's also a sure sign that the manager is desperate. It's but a short step to voodoo dolls and books of spells. And I don't mind a lower league side playing like that against us in a cup tie, but when you're supposed to be in the same league, show a bit more courage.

Pardon?

'Don't vote for that paint drying. This paint is drying. Vote for this paint!' About 1.25 years, ish, of formal British socialism, of a particularly vapid, limp and incoherent nature, and, after all those years, they end up with merely 'well at least they're not the other lot'.

I think that was Dr Evil. It was £1m plus that bald cat he had.

Likeable bloke, Gomez. This is quite an insightful chat, if you can get past the Horlicks-style mellowness:

Once again he found a better chance, after the usual running into defenders out on the right, by moving into the middle. Long may he drift.

Klopp deserves credit for giving youngsters a chance. It's great to see. Nunez - Rushie hit the post in that situation, as did many other great players. No problem at all. He did well. Delighted for Endo getting that goal. I think he needed that, even though it's hardly what he's been signed to do. He needs a bit of confidence. If Michael Holding had been a footballer he'd have been like Gravenberch - what a graceful, clever player he is. Gomez has very quietly grown back into this squad. Elliott - still no idea what he is. He's smart, he has a great attitude, but I don't really know what he's trying to do most of the time. The Europa League is a drag at this stage, in some ways, but we could look back on this as so valuable for the experience it's giving a few youngsters.