Miercoles

Six games left and we could win the league and Chelsea could get relegated, imagine saying that in August.

He's got some weird looking knees man. When he went down I was looking at his leg and I'm like oh yeah that's dislocated, he's fucked. Then he got up and he's moving around and they both liked like that, lol. Maybe he's okay? Maybe he just has both kneecaps out at all times haha

He's just giving Burny some shit. They're part of the best defense in the league together.

Just bumping this up in preparation for Andre Marriner.

Man that was a great goal

I'm guessing so, which worked fine at West Ham so I'm not too worried about it. Since losing his spot Wilson looks hungry and downright dangerous.

Crazy how this guy was scoring the goals that pulled us out of relegation last year, that's not even his fucking position. He's an automatic MOTM every game in the holding role, and oh if you happen to play him advanced for whatever reason he'll just score every game, whatever.

See, you put him in and you score six goals, simple. For real though, how about that little backheel for the fifth goal, delightful.

And the two subs combine to score within a minute. This fucking manager mate

Fellas, we might be in trouble here, I forgot to wear my lucky shirt last night. *Scores three goals while I'm feeding the cats* Ah, we might be okay actually. Nice of them to score two more once I've got the TV on as well

Whoa. That's some Alan Pardew three years without scoring from a corner level shit.

I watch a fair amount of women's football and the typical scorelines aren't any different from the men's, it's not like every game is 5-4 or anything like that. Plenty of 1-0's, 2-1, etc. For the daily experience as a fan, the size of the goal doesn't need to change to make it more like men's football. I think you mainly see these outrageous scorelines because the drop-off from strong teams to weaker teams can be massive. You see similar things when the minnows play the big fish in Men's internationals too, there are just more minnows about in Women's. A lot of these countries have programs that are only a few years old, in cultures where women playing sports is not encouraged. Compare that to the US which has had a strong women's program for decades, and where football is one of the biggest sports for girls from 4 years old through college, and you get your 13-0 scores. In other words, Thailand would have gotten fucked in that game whatever the size of the goal was. Regarding goalkeeping, it is an issue in women's football and I think it comes down to player base. It's a specialized position, most people coming up in the sport don't dream of being goalkeepers, so you have an even smaller talent pool in a sport that already has a limited pool. Then you cut that down again when you look for people who are crazy enough for goalkeeping and have the height, it can be tough. So you have some short pyschos and some tall hesitant players in the goal, and then for your minnow teams it can even be like it is in the youth levels where its just the worst outfield player or the coach's kid or whatever. As the game grows, that will get better. If you compare things now to say 2007 when Hope Solo was like the only decent keeper in the world it seemed, there has already been a lot of improvement in the position.

Am I crazy or was it offside before the throw in on their second goal? Like they didn't bother with the flag because it ended up in touch, but then Villa scored from the throw in. I might just be crazy though.

That was the craziest thing, I hated scoring first under Bruce, knowing we'd then try to hold on with last ditch defending for the next 75 fucking minutes.

I remember watching the 2002 NBA finals, Sacramento Kings vs the Lakers, and being absolutely blown away by the biased officiating. Most people at the time put it down to incompetence, it all evens out over the season, the usual bullshit. A decade later the referee is imprisoned after it comes out that he had been fixing games on behalf of the fucking Mafia. Now this is a smaller league in a country where sports betting is not a "mainstream" activity and is illegal in most areas. The NBA has a lot of international reach but nothing compared to the premier league. Does anybody really think that match fixing is not going on in the biggest league in the world, in a country where sports betting is mainstream, with a massive global betting audience? The amount of money involved is insane, and I would be absolutely fucking AMAZED if some premier league referees hadn't been mobbed up by now. I'm not saying every crap decision is match fixing, but it's crazy to ignore the more egregious games. Games like Tottenham/Brighton where there are literally four egregious decisions all against the same team, that's corruption. It'll be another twenty years before anyone gets arrested, if they don't sweep it under the rug, but I sure as fuck won't be surprised the second time around either. For what it's worth, I completely lost interest in basketball after that series in 2002 and haven't watched the sport since, so it would be good for the premier league to at least make a token effort to clean things up before it gets to that level.

Finally saw the clip, looks like Eddie already sorted it then and there. The way some of you lot were going on, I thought he threw a shoe or something.

Yeah, that's a deliberate misinterpretation of my post, but you do you. Getting subbed off when you came on as a sub is always going to sting a bit. Obviously in a perfect world you don't throw a fit, but it's also a complete non-issue if a player is upset about it - of course they are.

It'd be more of an issue if he wasn't upset imo, we want the players to want to play.

Did we just win three games in six days? This fucking team man

Eddie how is so fucking good.

Anyone remember Schar getting kicked in the face twice with no pen a week ago?

That Balloon D'or is getting further and further away isn't it?

Not even on the bench today?

I thought so at the time. I had played a Norwich save on FM and Josh was way better there.

That move to get into the box for his assist was filthy, the way he switched to his other foot for the cross caught everyone out as well.