Kid Icarus

Both of our 5-1s this season have been weird like. What a succulent result Pope: 6 Trippier: 8.5 Schär: 7 Botman: 7 Burn: 4.5 Longstaff: 7 Bruno: 8 Joelinton: 8.5 Murphy: 7.5 Wilson: 8 ASM: 8 Gordon: 7.5 Isak: 8 Willock: 8

I've always thought Fabianski was really underrated. I wonder if he's this bad now.

Fucking hell, 90% of this match has been a gift

Why do we keep shooting from the halfway line

Right now don't be daft anymore please

GTFI!!!

That should be Pope's ball all day like, Antonio's not doing anything to him really.

Good scoreline but we haven't been great aside from a few moments. Daft to let them back into it, it seems like we thought it was done after 15 minutes and we could just ease our way to more goals. You can tell Eddie wasn't happy. There are more goals in this for us but we can't allow any hubris to set in at any point.

Come on Callum, show us your goals

Good lineup. Makes sense. at Howe trolling everyone who confidently asserted that he doesn't rotate.

Lampard

Looks like we have our new forum heel

Hard to tell considering he managed the tail end of the best club side I've ever seen.

The Wolves match was before the 7-0. They've lost to Bournemouth, then Man City, then drawn with Chelsea since then.

Yeah, I'll only start worrying about Liverpool if they string 3 wins together. They've only done that once this season and it was either side of the World Cup.

Knowing that it was Rafa managing makes all the difference to your perception of that team I think. I also can't remember whether that was during Diame's Amdy Faye phase or his peak Patrick Vieira phase.

What have you said there that disproves what I've said? None of those sports transcend geography, class, economic status, or popularity anywhere near to the extent that football does. If you've come to your conclusion that 'it happens because we let it' then that's your decision and you have your answer, but personally I don't think it's as simple as the solution being that we just make the rules and punishment more draconian and that'll stop a supposed problem. This apparent ideal of footballers walking around calling referees 'sir', eveyone respecting referees as figures of authority, and blindly accepting their decisions just because isn't going to happen imo. Just in this country alone we spend hours of discussion amongst fans and within punditry undermining any notion of blindly accepting referee's decisions by analysing them in minute detail, especially when they're wrong. Do you think that by punishing players for appealing, that will all just go away and everyone will make a collective decision to see referees decisions as sacrosanct? What about in other countries where it's a cultural norm to question authority? You might have more chance of it happening if/when the standard of refereeing and rule-making also improves, the blind cronyism abates, and technology improves, but even then I think it's wishful thinking and comes with unintended consequences. That's before even getting onto what the potential byproduct might be of giving more unchecked power to a group of professionals who are often accused as being attention seekers and power hungry.

Just going to take a wild guess, but I'd say that it has a lot to do with football being a wildly more popular sport that transcends all sects of society. Rugby, Cricket, Darts etc don't have the same problem because in relative terms to football, no one plays those sports as widely across the world and across more or less any boundary you can think of.

A goal or assist every 3.5 starts btw

I just saw the opportunity to have a dig at him and took it

I'd take more notice of my nana's tea leaves than FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver like. In the space of 3 game rounds we've gone from a a 29% chance to a 66% chance of CL qualification. Any model that moves that wildly over so little isn't worth much imo.

All of the podcasts are miles better when they just stick to the football like. All of the attempts at humour come across as forced and lacking authenticity these days and that's before getting onto whether anyone find it funny or not. The Ramble used to be really funny, but it feels scripted now.

My only real concern is that we're knackered after Sunday. That's the only thing this season that's really let us down, the commitment to win is always there.

Yeah, the refereeing in the Wolves match wasn't much better either. Thought Atwell wasn't terrible and let the game flow. He got a few things wrong/inconsistent, but him letting the play go more than made up for it and suited us.