GideonShandy

The more I watch the incident, the more it looks like a prearranged plan. "Clatter Schar, get in his face, see if you can get him to react and, when he does, milk it for all you can." Pawson had already blown for a foul near the halfway line and everyone including Diaz knew it. Schar was basically just retrieving the ball. Diaz barges into him, hard, when he's not expecting or braced for contact. On the close-up you can see that when Schar is on the ground, Diaz leans over him and evidently says something. (If he'd spat on him I'm sure we would have heard about it.) When Schar understandably moves towards Diaz to respond, Diaz stands his ground when the natural reaction would be to take a step back, and then leans in so that Schar's forehead makes contact. And down he goes. Reckon he'd probably rehearsed the whole performance.

Schar should have hurled himself to the ground clutching his face as soon as he felt contact and left the ref to decide which of the two writhing bodies to send off (or both or neither).

One game closer to Tonali's reappearance.

Transfer fee (per release clause) of only £3.4 million (4 million euros). Decent bargain for Villareal (although not as good as when we got him for £1.5 million.)

Horse on a Mag?

This is absolutely awful.

The thing about unseen work is that you don't see it.

Hauled off after 70 mins.

Mikel Merino to Arsenal for only 25 million? https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/arsenal-transfer-news-mikel-merino-33373577

Highlights

Deadloss Holiday

The enterprising coach responsible for this cunning wheeze is from Consett.

"Atkinson is back and England go to Plan B. And you all know what that means, right? The field spreads and the balls will be back of a length. I'm a Newcastle season-ticket holder and this tactic is the equivalent to our set pieces under Alan Pardew - without fail, the delivery would be pumped in the general direction of Mike Williamson at the back post. Did it work? Rarely. In fact, never." From the Times online cricket coverage just now -- Sam Dalling

The Small Nineteen.

'e's 'orrible.

He's 3 or 4 inches taller than Hughie Gallacher was.

OK, that one's better. Not worrying.

Very cold terse statement. Worrying.

Unless PCP had a prior agreement giving the Saudis an option to buy its shares under certain circumstances (which is possible), it would have no obligation to sell its shares to them just because they decided to invest more capital into the club. PCP wouldn't have any obligation to put in more of its own money either. The only consequence would be that PCP's proportionate ownership interest would be diluted, i.e. reduced.

Forbes says $795 million i.e. 618 million pounds https://www.forbes.com/lists/soccer-valuations/ Transfermarkt says 657 million euros i.e. 554 million pounds https://www.transfermarkt.us/premier-league/marktwerteverein/wettbewerb/GB1 Sportico says $700 million i.e. 544 million pounds https://d3data.sportico.com/SoccerValuations/SoccerValuationsList.html No idea how reliable those figures are.

Should hire a PFM next time.

Any (well, almost any) use of the word "suffer" by managers, players or pundits.

"In 2005, Zwayer was involved in the match fixing scandal which centered around Bundesliga referee Robert Hoyzer, who took bribes to fix several matches which he officiated. Zwayer assisted him in a match and accepted a bribe of 300 euros to avoid critical scenes for Wuppertaler SV. In January 2005, he and three other high-ranking referees informed the DFB about Hoyzer's match fixing. He was subsequently banned from refereeing for 6 months, a suspension that was kept secret for several years until the German newspaper Die Zeit published a secret file from the German FA." Wiki

Substitutes touching the grass with their hand and then making the sign of the cross as they run on. Seems like they all do it these days. More annoying than Bellingham grabbing his crotch and almost as bad as that Turkish idiot who got suspended for the "grey wolf" sign.