Exiled in Texas

That annoys me on FIFA aswell. My defenders always do it, which makes me think the offside is going to called. Also known as....Hands up if you desperately hope that they are offside so that you haven't totally bolloxed up this play.

AKA - Brazil Mk II

Referee dilema - was it a dive or was there just no-foul and he fell? Was there contact? Was the player fouled, but exagerated the contact? Was the player looking for/waiting for contact and then he fell? Hard to tell with 100% certainty. Therein lies the problem.

Without meaningful continental competitions to qualify for, or a relegation battle, I can see it being a bore. Good point VI - perhaps the closed-league/franchise issue is the reason why playoffs are more meaningful than regular season. Without anything else to play for (eg Champions/Europa league) what else is there to play for outside of the top 4 (or often 2 teams).

Play-Offs vs Regular Season?? - it's just the way it is in US sports. Football doesn't play a balanced schedule, neither does Hockey. Not sure about Baseball or Basketball but I don't think they do. So if you don't play balanced schedule in the regular season then it's not as accurate in predicting the best team. The regular season is rather deminished in terms of importance by the playoffs, and other than seeding issues and home field advantage within the playoffs, it doesn't really matter if you finish 1st 2nd or 3rd as long as you make the playoffs. Perhaps the interesting issue is how many games should each round of the playoffs be? NFL aside, NHL, NBA and MLS are all best of 7 (maybe best of 5 for early rounds). Does this system produce the truely best team? Probably more so than a single game winner-takes-all.

Watched last nights game to cheer on FCD - I thought that Rapids were the dominant team over most of the match, although FCD played well in patches (and especialy the last 5 mins). Rapids forward Casey was a playing Bulldog in a china shop.....was excellent. I thought the referee had a terrible game - he seemed to have decided that he wasn;t going to get involved in anything outside of a class II homicide. How a player can block a free kick from less than 2 yards away and only get a warning is beyond me....seems like that would have been an easy card. The Penalty for the Rapids - looked like one initially, but the replay from the goal line showed that Casy took a dive...watch his free leg do a motion to similate being tripped when there was no contact at all. I'd like to think the referees got that right, but in actuality they just bottled that call along with many others. Still wierd how the championship featured two Western Conference teams and how the supposed Eastern Conference Champions were from the Western Conference. But I liked the news coming from the Commish about playing a true balanced schedule of home/away games. Not sure if I want MLS to play the worlds calendar (Sep-May) or continue to play their "off" calendar and play during the summer when it's nice to watch a game during the summer evenings. So with FCD and Texas Ranger making it to the finals but loosing, does this mean that Dallas Stars will make the Stanley Cup finals too? (hahah no chance for the Dallas Cowboys)

I get youth teams trying this trick every now and then.....they get one bite at that trick and think they are very cool for trying that, but then guaranteed within a few minutes they have a free kick that they "re-position" with their foot, and then I award a IFK for a "double-touch" going the other way. Soon ends that malarky, and they usually don't try it again in my games.

#1 job for an AR is to watch for offside. So a lot of his focus will be on watching the 2nd-to-last defender and adjusting his position according to that. Watching play is secondary. In fact the quicker the game gets, and the more the AR has to watch the offside line, and listen for the ball being played. If you try to watch the ball being played, and then turn to look at the offside line, you'll be out of position and too late to see where the players were at the time of the pass. There is also a huge difference between seeing something, and seeing exactly what happened. A lot of times, especially when the ball is not in your quadrant, you see something happen (as do the coaches, bench and fans) but you don't know exacly what happened. And unlike the coaches, bench, fans you can't just give the decision to their team even though if you don't you're a s*** ref. And, yes, unfortunately there are referees who will tell their AR to only call offsides and throw-ins, or to give him first call for fouls in the area etc. The ARs are supposed to pay attention during the game to the calls being made by the referee and learn what he considers to be a foul and then support that.

He just wants managers to be able to score them I think. Which of course depends soley on whether their team won or lost and whether they feel hard done by for a specific decision.

Didnt get a decision wrong iirc Says the winning team.....wonder what the Gooner fans think [/fishing]

I agree with you in principle. What if the referee just didn't see something though? Or in his opinion it wasn't a foul, when replays suggest it was? Would simple explanations like that be enough for people? Players, coaches and fans think that anything not called was "missed" by the referee, when in fact he might have seen it all and decided it wasn't a foul etc. They might not like the decision but the understand things a bit better if they know that you saw it (or perhaps were completely shielded from the view). More openess would be good - and might be the added "incentive" to the referees really be on top of their game.

To improve the standard of refereeing, you need impartial and unbiased assessment and review. Allowing a manager to add his input is worthless because they are never "impartial and unbiased". Pullis just wants a pound of flesh and wants to give the refereee a 0/5 score, whereas the winning manager would give 5/5. Thereby, giving an average rating of 2.5/5. What's the point? What they should do is publish the FA assessments and the important parts of the referee reports.....publish what the referee said that he saw, or thought or what process he went through. Wouldn't it be great to hear WHY the referee gave a specific decision - perhaps he saw something that we all missed, perhaps he processed the LOTG in a manner that we hadn't expected. And perhaps he did just not see what the TV Slo-Mo replay saw. But either way it's public and open with nothing to hide, and no closed door, closing ranks coverups.

Maybe it will work out for them too, just like it did for us

Deterrent not to get sent off.

Actually after I read the article (after posting) it seems that this town creates a celebrity Guy each year for the bonfire and had picked Rooney to take the p*** out of him rather than as Man U fans.

Funnily enough yes - southern suburb of Manchester.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/nov/03/wayne-rooney-manchester-united-effigy Burned in Salford? Nope. Hulme? No, Stretford? Nah. Chorlton Cum Hardy? 'Fraid Not. NO, Burned in Kent where all the Manchester United fans come from.

Lion - didn't you love the coverage that the game got, all the goals were reshown during the final credits too....especially liked how the female commentator kept calling them "the Mackems" instead of Sunderland. Hahahahaha

We love our smilies... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/pmrye/Smilies/Saylor.gif

Gomes f***ed up, I never disputed that. I'm arguing against the notion that the referee did nothing wrong. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion. You'd think Clattenberg cost Tottenham 3 points for trying to keep the game flowing in the last few minutes (which would be to Tottenham's advantage anyway). I'm not even convinced Clattenberg saw him handle the ball, he seemed to be telling Scholes that it wasn't a Pen, and Nani's body was between the ref and the ball. Suppose it all hinges on what the conversation with the linesmen was about. The referee got it wrong then, to a ludicrous degree. He has no excuse for missing such a blatant (not to mention lengthy) handball. The stuff about the effect on the result is again irrelevant to my argument here. With Nani's body being between the referee and the ball, he lilkely didn;t see it. Now, the AR? No excuse there....he had to have seen it as he has a great view across the field. So my guess on what happened. AR sees handling, but Gomes picks up ball. AR sees no signal from referee, and continuing with a punt is a better play than a DFK from 2 yards of goal line, so he assumes play will continue with punt. Then Gomes has his brain fart, AR is looking to referee for direction, goal scored and then AR wants to talk to Ref. At this point AR will have mentioned handling - not sure why Ref decided to over rule him. No-one would have objected to the goal being disallowed and the DFK awarded for handling. A monumental cluster.

Advantage is signaled with two hands, open palmed and both arms upwards and outwards at 45 degrees. Play on - nothing there, is usualy signaled with a single hand, open palmed but arm down and forward. Clattenburg's two handed open palmed shrug was saying, why are you looking at me....I didn't stop play.

Have been replaying this incident from a ref perspective...to review what happened and how to apply the LOTG. It looks like referee saw no foul on Nani, but was up field and probably missed Nani putting his hand on the ball and pulling it back towards him as Nani's body was probably blocking his view of the ball. So referee sees keeper pick up the ball and wants to let play continue. Then keeper puts ball on ground (thinking that it's a DFK), and the rest is history. My question is why the AR did not flag Nani for handling the ball. At no time did the AR raise to flag for handling, so there was nothing for referee to call. AR even followed ball/keeper upfield as if ball was still in play (keeping his offisde positioning). At time that ball was on the deck and Nani was asking if it was live, referee was giving the open-palm display of "nothing there - keep playing" Only after ball was in the goal did the AR signal and then subsequently get overruled by the referee who awarded the goal. In all this - I think the AR is the problem for not flagging for deliberate handling by Nani.

Were you in the Sunderland end or the Newcastle end? I was a bit surprised when I came around the back of the Fulwell and saw that we had a turnstile open only for Newcastle fans and the queue was massive. I was in the section right next to the Roker, the mackems in the next section to us were going mental at us. I was standing next to a bloke who had a young kid on his shoulders, the kid must have been no more than 4 or 5 years old but the bloke wanted him to go so that he could tell his own kids about it. Was in the Sunderland end as it was my mate who got the tickets - I think we were about half way between the Fulwell end and the center circle. Was funny watching the Newcastle fans who had tickets in the Sunderland fans stands work their way to the front, find a steward then unzip their jackets to show off the b/w shirts, lob a punch or two then hope that the stewards pulled them out before they got hauled back into the mob. Most made it but a couple didn't get close enough to the front rown and got worked over before they got spat out. Ahh, but what a great day that was.

I was in the Clock Stand and loved it. Was also in Clock Stand with my mate from Sunderland (and his friends). Tremendous feeling watching the despare all around me.

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