Wullie

Rondon with a first half hat trick for Venezuela vs Japan.

Playing Denmark and Switzerland home and away and only losing once is pretty special too. We're a team of barely professional footballers that wouldn't look out of place of a building site. Have done extremely well to have come so close. Give over.

One for the footballing pet hates thread there at the end: Schmeichel takes 30 seconds to take a goal kick in added time, ref gives him a card then doesn't add a single second on.

I mean, I don't know why I expected anything else but this Ireland game is indescribably bad so far.

The snow at Boro? That was longer ago than that man.

Not sure about that like.

Gutted about this like. Priced up the Mitro/Ronaldo/Kane hat trick treble, 119/1, decided it was too ridiculous to go for.

Had Mitro/Ronaldo/Kane FGS treble worth £45, ffs.

Bookies offering 40s on a 50:50 shot.

Is this you? Genuine maniac.

Good day today, had Cagliari/Liverpool double and Man Utd/Wolves/Liverpool all to win with BTTS at 60/1.

Wish I'd put chopey's cards bet on today.

Cagliari were ridiculously good odds today. Absolutely flying, 19/10 at home to Fiorentina. 4 up after an hour.

Poyet

Not much use unless you've got a player called Robert Steve in mind Minhosa.

Morelos is quality.

Set Piece Menu?

Today because Braga are at home tomorrow and the clubs are quite close, extra early not to clash with the early CL games.

Looked like that initially, turned out Atkinson just changed his mind having seen the injury.

There's often no such thing as the "correct decision" in football, that's the thing nobody in the game seems willing to admit publicly. They're insistent on providing objectivity where it doesn't exist. Funnily enough, they don't use the system at all for the genuinely objective calls in a game (was that a corner or a goal kick?).

The challenge idea is so short sighted imo, just a lazy suggestion because other sports have it but doesn't consider how the game of football actually works in practice where a minor decision can become a major one depending on what follows. Would you waste your 1 challenge on a throw-in that you thought was yours? Unlikely. But you'd want to challenge it if the ball was in your net 10 seconds later. How would that work? Do you have to challenge at the time, and lose the challenge once the ball is back in play? Or can you challenge based on what happens after it? And what happens if you challenge for a penalty for Alli's handball? It clearly hits his hand. Do you lose the challenge then? Farce is exactly what it would become, very quickly.

The rules have been fine with the odd tweak here and there for 150 years. Rather than keep meddling with the game itself, they need to put it down as a bad job, accept that it can never work in a game as subjective as football and fuck the whole thing off.

VAR couldn't have made more of a mess of that game if he/it tried. On the main TV game as well, lovely.

VAR gave the red didn't it? Atkinson had already given yellow.

It was definitely the right decision because VAR made it.