leffe186

Jesus there really is too much football. I need to develop a multiscreen war room.

Leverkusen move the ball around so quickly the ref is always in the way

I do think that’s only a yellow, but Paqueta’s a bit lucky there

Kicking off! Mint

Leverkusen are really bloody good, tbf

Yeah, watching West Ham isn’t fun. Timewasting already too.

Strong sides all round.

Forgot it was Milan-Roma tonight, seems a bit more interesting.

Didn’t realize just how lucky Arsenal have been with injuries this year. They have nine players with 27 or more PL appearances this year, and the only reason it isn’t ten is because they’ve rotated their keeper a bit. In contrast you guys have only five, and two of those are Miggy and Longstaff. We have seven, but that includes Hojbjerg who’s come on as sub 24 times.

Not really related but vaguely: our Man City game just got moved to the last week of the season. The question on The Fighting Cock podcast was “could you root for a Spurs loss if it meant missing out on CL but Arsenal not winning the title?” The conclusion was that the absolute best case scenario was that we kick-off, run down our end and just leather it in. Then do the same thing 100 times. Entire stadium cheering like mad, every own goal we score 60 thousand people do the Poznan. Not gonna lie, I’m tempted. Imagine the atmosphere. And imagine the unadulterated fume from all those Arsenal pundits. Reckon it’s well worth it.

And tbf, “Do you appreciate a good shit?” is only partway down the second page. Glass houses and all that.

I think Lille are considered the best chance of Villa losing, so tonight will be crucial.

Yeah in the end. We wanted Gvardiol years ago trying to get him when the price wasn’t as steep. VDV is obviously more suited now Ange is here.

Why not…both?

They make a profit of £100M anyway - it doesn’t matter to them.

It’s what you had to pay. Everyone wanted him. We’d been after him for ages but our window closed very quickly.

My wife’s been to the house in question

Yeah, everyone overrates their own kids

I can’t wait until loans and multi-team ownership are banned completely tbh Partly because it will never happen, sadly.

And more importantly, if they DO finish fifth and win the Europa then Man U would have to finish above one of us or Villa as well as the chasing pack.

There’s just so much luck involved though. We sent Dane Scarlett (good player, just scored three or four in two games for England U20s or some such) to Ipswich this season because they had a young manager who used to manage our kids and needed a centre-forward. They promptly bought another one, started the season better than expected and Scarlett barely got a kick. Alfie Devine is a lovely midfielder who we loaned to Port Vale. Forced his way into the team and looked great. Plymouth wanted him and have another loan player of ours and a manager who used to coach them both for England. We thought it would be a better test for him in a solid mid-table team. Couple of months later they’re fighting relegation and the manager’s out. There are tons more examples, even this year. I suspect it’s the same for everyone, we just don’t hear about other clubs. It feels like Chelsea and Arsenal have a lot of successful loans, but it’s probably just that they send a billion players out so law of averages says one or two will hit pay dirt.

It is. I think that if there were BM players really putting them under pressure there then the ref would give it as it would be a pretty transparent cheat to deny a goal scoring opportunity. It just seemed from the vid that they were in the general vicinity but not pressing, and that there was at least a significant chance that Gabriel was just making an honest mistake - and I think the ref got both penalty decisions right. I really think that we need to be more careful when giving penalties in general, although obviously it’s stupid when different refs apply different rules. There was a Forest player on Sunday who did one of those tackles where you make the tackle but follow through and catch the guy on the knee. Looks awful on VAR. He got booked and not sent off. I think it was the right decision - I think it’s too difficult to ascertain intent and you need to be absolutely sure with red cards - but we’ve also had two separate players sent off this season for identical tackles. Exactly the same. Do one or the other. It’s the inconsistencies that really drive people nuts.

It really did look like he was going to go past him then realized he’s supposed to dive and just sort of jumped a bit. Got caught between two stools as it were. The pretending to be injured was the icing on the cake

Plymouth are making an absolute arse of it.

…and Leeds immediately nearly score.