Figures 1-0 Football

Hartlepool's nowhere near Newcastle In time taken, Hartlepool to Sunderland is just as far as Altrincham to Manchester. Hartlepool is also a relatively small club (like Altrincham) and Sunderland/Newcastle/Boro are the biggest teams near to Hartlepool. Therefore, by the logic of "he lives close to Manchester, so he has some sort of feelings towards Man Utd" - the ref from Hartlepool should have some feelings towards Sunderland and never have ref'd our match. I'm not saying it's right that he's been given this match, I just think it's ludicrous that people would go so over the top when his performances have never been bought into question when refereeing a Man Utd match and he has absolutely no feelings towards either club.

How far does this go though? Lymm is about a mile away from the Greater Manchester border, but is in a different county - would a referee from Lymm have any issues? People from Lymm may or may not support Man Utd as it's just as close to Manchester as Altrincham is. If the media cared so much about this (and weren't making a big deal out of it because it's a "big match" against Liverpool) then they'd have raised their concerns in his first ever Man Utd game, but they didn't.

He's already reffed one Man Utd games this season and nothing was said about it. Edit - Our referee against Bristol City was from Hartlepool (a small club that is close to Newcastle), nobody took issue with that one either.

Manchester United, Manchester City, Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Altrincham, Rochdale, Stockport are all in Greater Manchester, along with a fair few semi-professional teams. The ref isn't from Manchester, he's from Greater Manchester. He supports Altrincham and probably doesn't give two flying f***s about either Man Utd or Man City. Would someone from Wigan be targeted if he was put in charge of this game? Absolutely not. Just a pure media shitstorm over nothing. If you looked hard enough into every single refereeing appointment, you could probably find some obscure link to one of the clubs.

http://www.themag.co.uk/assets/jack-colback-halt-newcastle-united-nufc-650x400.jpg

Just realised that Moyes has a four year contract

Still continuing with his great return of 0 goals and 0 assists since the start of Euro 2016. He does a lot of worthless running though.

Espanyol v Las Palmas is probably the equivalent game to these two and it was on TV on Friday night - it was as garbage as these are.

I thought I had misheard and they said "family member". That is truly tragic. I often wonder how these people get invited to stuff like this. Who contacts who? Do NUFC regularly phone around random people and ask them to come onto the pitch or do they contact NUFC? Would be pretty grim if those two randomers used that lass on X Factor that they probably barely know as a reason to do the HT draw.

Getting the winners of Bristol City v Hull or Leeds v Norwich at home would be a great draw for us. Aye and they're playing Chelsea so guaranteed to have at least one London club in the draw. Spurs and Arsenal are still in it too.

This ref is shit scared of making any sort of decision

Sky showing Middlesbrough v Watford and then acting disappointed at HT when it's a terrible game.

Middlesbrough fans booing the ref off of the pitch, when he's probably saved them going down to 10 men

I believe they've made this so that you can only get a home end ticket if you have a previous Barnsley booking history, as they refused to give us any more than what they have.

He's looking better because he's playing at his level against much worse opposition midfields. Good enough to play this season but needs binning it at the end of it (providing we go up, of course).

Thought his kicking was much, much better yesterday. Made some good claims under pressure too.

The early Championship game much more interesting than either of the two "super Sunday" PL games.

West Ham away and Arsenal at home next two games, cant make a case for them winning either of those games. Might sneak a draw, but nothing else. Could easily be 6-10 points from safety after 10 games.

Where on Earth did the 5 minutes of added time come from? Did any player even go down during the 2nd half?

That 2nd yellow was not even a free kick. Zaha as strong as a wet tissue, barely even a touch on him.

55,000 screaming*

van Aanholt off injured today too, so they're down to their only other goalscorer in Defoe

Aguero seems to miss a hell of a lot of penalties

Tend to agree, he's just blatantly kicked him with no attempt to play the ball. No different to kicking someone off the ball, which is a straight red.

The lack of coverage League One and Two get is really poor. A 30 minutes highlight show on Channel 5 for both leagues is nowhere near enough.