80

I don't especially disagree. With the point your opponents are making about teams moving to lower defensive lines, I think a counter point is that it'll potentially create more space in midfield for the kind of players we've traditionally loved to watch. Rather than the condensed, sterile, ultra disciplined, pass you to death Man City style being all conquering, we might see more room for mercurial inspiration in the game. Going back to offside though, the issue is football, like much of life itself, was never designed to be litigated with millimeter precision. When we start trying to isolate and quantify every element, and pin every action down with legal tightness, we kill the thing we love. Neither interpretation of the law is really wrong, what's wrong is the fixation on the exact moment something is or isn't off. We need to learn to tolerate some uncertainty and inexactness in a world in which technology allows us to retrospectively give ourselves the illusion of certainty and accuracy. Will daylight let us more easily spot if someone is offside? Yes I think so. Will it be farcical if someone's trailing toe being in line with a defender's leading toenail means the action is onside? Also yes. Most of us know what feels right in the game and feels right for the game, we're just struggling to translate it into legal language and technological certainty because the game was never meant to seriously interact with either of those things.

That EE logo is vile. Someone photoshop it out of existence.

Of course, the real fix is just to get rid of VAR. Then either rule works reasonably well and makes for an enjoyable game.

What sensors are in the ball that judge whether it's crossed the line for a goal? Get a load of those and stick one under each player's ballsack. Make them judge positioning relative to eachother. That's the fix.

Haven't seen the press conference, but that's embarrassing if that got brought up.

England doing a Princess Catherine welfare check on Hall.

Well done lad Hope he doesn't go too berserk trying to impress them. But acclimatising to the squad and whole call up thing will be great for him. And us too - proves it can be done.

To be honest I'd feel happier if he was going with a chaperone... Gordon and him would be sweet.

...And then they could sponsor us, with some nice black and white stripes to go on our black and white stripes.

Spot on. No other explanation is required for things going to pot around then; it was pretty obvious it was going to happen and it wasn't really avoidable once we'd gone past a certain threshold. You'd need rock solid proof before you started rewriting the history of that time.

I think there's a ton of reasons not to give it any credit, and plenty of reasons for our form to collapse around then regardless of any off pitch stuff. We've got problems with tactics now, but there's no denying we were shattered through injuries and fatigue in those days.

I took as being the hotel chat, to be honest.

It sounds like a mixed bag at least... Let's hope they take the good ideas and ditch the shit ones...

Maybe some bingo

I don't think it's that, but Botman played for a couple of games with one...

Oh my god indeed. Keep the details coming. Hopefully you can put us off football for good.

Yeah, nearly mentioned that Wasn't meant as a jab at Eddie.

Side thought - did our psychology start going to shit around the same time we hired a club psychologist? Botman's assuredness, Trippier losing his head, Schar's confidence leaning into arrogance, Longstaff dissolving into a mewling baby, Eddie seeming to lose some self-awareness etc. Pretty sure it's a coincidence, but it just struck me as ironic.

I wish he could at least get pre season in...

I'm working on the assumption it's his own idea, to be fair. Yeah, doing it over his head would be mental.

I think this is a good idea in principle, but I get the impression it's very unlikely as Eddie has historically had a pretty tight circle.

I'm intrigued now Didn't really see the match. Sounds/looked like things carried on as they have been. I'm truly shocked that the additional rest and training time has seen us become less coordinated. I really didn't expect that, and am not sure what to make of it.

I'm not holding it against Sven, but this does seem to be true for our whole back line. I dunno, do we concede more than other teams between our defenders legs? I might just be noticing it because they're our players. Or is it a defensive technique issue? If it's not fitness, then yeah I guess we have to really help him get his head straight. He seems like a lovely guy, but I've never really got the Robocop/Der Kaiser vibes off him - he seems like quite an introvert at heart. Not the first into a punch-up.

I tend to doubt we're hiring anybody who speaks to the media before they're hired.