AyeDubbleYoo

Absolutely, and plenty of sports already do it. Rugby doesn’t expect referees to guess whether the ball has been grounded amongst a group of 20 blokes. He asks the video official to look for him.

I thought Broja was the real deal but he’s definitely gone through a quiet spell. Strikers like him really aren’t common in the PL these days. Early days though, he does have a lot of attributes.

Also think he would compliment Bruno well. He seems to love keeping it simple and just exchanging passes with everyone. Takes the pressure off you when you need to give a pass, then returns it to you when you’re in a position to use it better. Generally will be really interesting to see which midfielders we go for.

Got angry again today when I saw the little red dot for a loss on my football app.

Wouldn’t be surprised to see Rudiger go somewhere like Real Madrid.

That last paragraph is the worst part in a lot of ways. Especially living in London, nobody could understand what it was like. There were fans of other clubs who didn’t even know who Mike Ashley was.

I would’ve taken him for £0, but it was always a risk. Who knows if he’ll ever come back, maybe needs to drop down to a smaller club where he can play every minute for a season. Problem is if he has the heart for a battle.

Did anyone ever regret that?

Both better than Everton though, especially Wolves.

I would want a win, it’s our best chance for a while.

I wasn’t really talking about that incident specifically. I just mean that a lot of stuff in football - one official will come to a different conclusion than another. With the Havertz elbow for example, some officials will say yellow card and some will say red. Just using a replay for the decision won’t satisfy everyone.

An insight into your normal bathing technique maybe.

Isn’t it balls out of the bath?

I just think there’ll always be a certain percentage of blinkered fans in any support, who think they have to back anything to do with their club. Of course it’s better if there’s none, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If only we could get teenage charvers to think a bit more critically

Didn’t the head of PIF have a journalist murdered, dismembered and smuggled out of an embassy in bags? Good post in general though, IMO we don’t have any need to defend Saudi and what they do. As Chelsea are finding out, fans have no say over their owner and really the club is just a pawn. Just lucky for some clubs that they get on-field success in the process.

There’s so many problems with VAR and a lot of it seems to come down to this really old-fashioned desire to suggest that the match referee is perfect or above reproach. Also the nature of football means that almost every decision is subjective. For me, the obvious error test is silly. I would be happy to give the referee the power to just signal for VAR instead of making any decision. He can say he couldn’t really see, then the VAR makes the decision. They’re all qualified officials, they should all be empowered to make decisions. Alternatively, just routinely review every match-changing incident, with the VAR making the decision regardless of what the on-field referee says. The test should be “was that a foul”, not “was it understandable that the referee didn’t give it”. Also the communication with fans is farcical. Look at NFL or even rugby. The referee runs to the camera, tells the fans what’s going on and what/why the decision is. Surely that at least makes them think it through logically. Or as in rugby, the conversation between the referee and the VAR is also live on TV. So everyone can hear what is being discussed and how they come to a decision. I also think penalties themselves are way too important in such a low-scoring sport. Especially with the amount of diving. I’d be up for making penalties more difficult, making the box smaller or some other method to reduce the impact of any one decision on the result. As long as we can’t get them right, anyway.

A bit

It was an incredible goal, not sure it’s even a mistake by Burn. Ridiculous pass and control.

To be fair to him, Chelsea are pretty much the best team at picking players second balls from any kind of poor touch. He was poor today but it was a very though task.

Mad that.

I’d say it’ll boost them if anything. Held their own against a class team, robbed of a result. Should be hyped for the next one.

He fouled him twice with exactly the same leg flick

Have to be proud of the performance, so annoying for the guy who should’ve been sent off to score the winner. And not to get the penalty.

I dunno, Leeds have conceded over 2 goals a game. That’s horrific.

I think Leeds will go, Burnley will grind out another few one-goal wins somewhere. Everton have also made a terrible appointment in Lampard, remains to be seen whether the quality of players can get them out of it.