Pidge

Repped for services to the forum. Not because I agree with the statement.

Emails come through now. The club has until Brighton to sort it's shit out.

Nothing yet, obviously. New site is fucking shit as well.

Always great to see the club popping into alder hey.

What does his age have to do with that? He's not played competitive football in a while and was working hard, hence the cramp. He was never finishing the game regardless.

I don't know, he had a couple of moments where he smartly drove the ball up the pitch or won an easy free kick to help when they were having a go. Overall he worked well and looked part of the team, but lacked that edge to get into a goalscoring position a bit more.

They played genuinely well last weekend. If they turn out the same it could turn into a tricky one. Especially with Zaha in behind Trent. But that said, we'll have a plan for that. And we're class and playing aggressively, keep them penned in and get the game won.

Tactics were fine I thought, just needed a bit more of putting the ball in the net. Score the penalty and this could've been a massacre.

When wouldn't you?

Gwan Div!

Haha, thought it was going to be something like that. But did spend a good part of Saturday sat on a platform waiting for the Portsmouth train at Horsham to fuck off so thought there was an outside chance.

If the opponent has the ball, how they move is their prerogative, the defender has to account for the risk that they do something unexpected.

Seriously? Where?

I think it's his timing in jumping into the challenge that turned it into that. Increased the chance of something going wrong massively. I don't think you can eliminate risk, it's mitigation. What I'm saying is that - for the game to work - the player's have to take some responsibility for it. The refs step in when they feel that hasn't happened. They try to do that proactively, but sometimes have to react to things instead. In that kind of setup you can't guarantee consistency (that's not really possible in sport anyway). Basically, it's the same as my view about throwing yourself in front of a shot. If the ball hits your hand, don't complain if you get punished, you made the choice to do that because of previous mistakes leaving you exposed. Similarly, if you tackle someone from behind, you might get punished for it. More than anything, I think the debate has been really unhelpful for the guy as the complaints have had a Streisand effects on the whole issue and he didn't ask for it. The chairman especially should shut the fuck up and let his players move on.

I think this is one instance where the rule is probably best not followed consistently. It's about player protection more than cheating, football has a lot of margin for bending rules so there has to be some scope for a player who makes that challenge in a way that doesn't endanger their opponent (i.e. not jumping on their leg) to not be arbitrarily punished. When someone does get hurt the challenge will naturally be reconsidered. When the ref thinks the player is being reckless or using too much force, they will call it out regardless. But even then they won't pick up on everything (they ignore some pretty blatant ones at times if you play for Burnley or Stoke). The real point these players and ex-pros should be debating is whether they have a duty of care to your fellow pros. To be diligent enough to know how to physically compete without risk of serious injury. I don't think he meant to, but the player fell way short of that and I think was right to be sent off as a result. Between this and the Tanganga one though I do wonder why the referee in both cases didn't use the screen to have a proper look at the incident.