gkmacca

The bloke was in tears when he missed the final a couple of years ago. He's a top pro as well as a great player. I cannot understand the idea that such a player sits there happy that his body has packed up. It's probably soul destroying for him.

No, the offside was not the reason. Peter Walton, for example, said: "Wataru Endo was standing in an offside position but he does not commit an offence because of that. The Liverpool midfielder goes on to commit an offence — interfering with play by stopping Levi Colwill from getting a clear run at the ball to try to stop Van Dijk. The law is quite clear on that aspect and so Van Dijk’s header was correctly disallowed. If the offence had only been offside, that would not have been a subjective call and there would have been no need for Chris Kavanagh, the referee, to go to the monitor". What Walton and other refs fail to explain, however, is how the fact that many players, many times in many games, in the same or similar situations in the box, do what this player did and they don't get penalised. Inconsistency, once again, is the issue.

It won't go down as highly as it deserves to, but this was an extraordinary win. With so many out, with so many kids in, forget all the hype with Ginsoak's bunch - they always had as many senior pros as they needed to bring them through - this was absolutely amazing. Inglethorpe never gets the praise he deserves - we MUST make sure he stays - and Klopp, too, the way he not just gives these players a chance - that's just part of it - but also gives them the right backing to be the best they can be - superb. This is a glorious win.

It's Peter Drury to Peter Dreary.

Really cynical play from them. Argentinian, even.

Must be real supporters there.

Rinse and fucking repeat.

Dry your eyes, you wailing babies and start supporting the team.

So many years on from the doubters to believers theme, in spite of so many things, and it's not as if anything's changed. Good luck to the next manager.

We're playing well with a much-weakened team. They get a crazy bit of luck. The idiots start whining. It's just vomit-throwing nonsense, some fans these days.

That's just so absurdly against the play, but I guess the cockney 'fans' will start bawling as a consequence.

Imagine all the players...holding hamstrings as one...You-oo-ooh...

I've not read this but I disagree. It's what Bazza prefers.

That header to Nunez was a thing of genius. When he gets in the groove he's an astonishingly ruthless player. Hope he's not out for too long.

The very organisations that pile the pressure on to managers will now be lecturing the rest of the population on the importance of caring about mental health. It's like Nazis taking a pause to warn about discrimination.

The southern anti-LFC attitude in those days was way worse than it is now. England, for example, took ages to come to terms with the fact that he was an essential forward for the national team. Ramsey was ridiculously stubborn about not giving him a proper chance. If he'd played for one of the London clubs he would have been a regular about two years earlier.

Ah, the daily gainsay. You'd have blue cards coming out of your fecking arse every day.

The rumour is the blue card will be mainly for dissent, but this not only begs the question, why is dissent being downgraded from a yellow card offence, it also begs the question, how will the card be used if, like Arsenal and both manc teams amongst others currently do, several players race to the ref at the same time? The whole issue in dealing with teams that encourage about half the team to intimidate the ref at the same time is: why not book them all, and, if not, why book anyone? Those clubs know that there's strength in numbers, so they get away with it, while one player gesturing at the ref will get a card. There really is nothing that a yellow card covers that can be moved over to a blue card without questioning the downgrading, and nothing in the current ineptitude of refs in administering the rules that yet another card will help.

I presume this 'bit of a flu bug' is actually the common cold. You don't play through the flu, nor shake it off within a couple of days. It's as if Covid never happened.

Klopp's presser showed part of why he's fed up with the whole thing. 'Have you forgiven Kompany yet for scoring that goal in 2019?' Is that really the best that these hacks can come up with after 'much thought'? No wonder so many of them have fled to YouTube. What the heck do they expect him to say? It's just mindless stuff they churn out every week.

With VAR's obsessive drawing of coloured lines and now the blue cards, they're heading inexorably towards a stage where they'll do away with players, pitches and footballs and concentrate solely on counting angels on the head of a pin. It'll still have its own TV programme: Metaphysik of the Day.

But seeing as this season they've deemed questioning refs is a yellow card offence, they're now basically suggesting that it's not really a yellow card offence. It's just how officials behave when they realise they're losing control of a situation but want to claim they're taking charge - like suddenly deciding it's fine for cyclists to ride side by side so they can have a good old natter in the road after failing to stop them having a good old natter in the road. I suspect blue cards are mainly being pushed so it's one more TV topic to justify the investment - more stuff to cover and comment on, more debate, more hype.

To clarify: if a player is judged to have made a blue card offence without the time remaining to serve a blue card, he or she will be given a yellow card. If a player is judged to have made a blue card offence because he or she has consciously calculated that, without the requisite time remaining to serve it, a yellow card will be given, a red card will be given. The referee will be given the additional authority, if he or she feels the conditions are right to use it, to give a player a blue, yellow and red card simultaneously for trying to wreck the coherence of the new system, and these cards will be served simultaneously by said player by sitting for six hours in the sin bin with no toilet breaks and only the occasional squirt of water. I trust that clears the matter up.

A typically clear announcement. Yellow and red cards as usual, but one or maybe two blue ones for 'certain offences'. What, pray, are those 'certain offences'? Fouls, perchance? Anything else already covered by yellow and red cards? Or completely new offences, such as 'looking at the ref in a strange way' or 'making a heart shape with your hands after scoring a goal'? Yellow cards were mainly introduced to cover all of those crafty fouls players were getting away with that didn't quite warrant a red. Fine. But a yellow is all you need. Now they'll spend so much time pondering what colour to use the game will probably last another ten minutes. Yet another example of minds that cannot think in even the most vaguely logical fashion.

My guess: she preferred the Culture Club to the Crazy Gang, and it served him right.