The9

Exactly. They're linesmen, doing what linesmen do, which is exactly the role of the "assistant referee" in the pdf link above.

Unless you can find the equivalent document from pre-1996 and highlight the changes in role, you're still not making a point. Literally all but one of those tasks were expected of linesmen too. The only difference is "assisting with bleeding" which wasn't a role of any official until after 1996 so has nothing to do with the renaming.

Deliberately kicking or attempting to kick an opponent is a red card, should we want to go down that road...

Perfectly aware of that, but I will always call them linesmen and not bow to the token rebranding which only served to remove a semantic issue around the term "female linesmen", given what an outlier they are at all levels of football and how unnecessary the renaming is and was. Changing to the term "assistant referee" did not confer any additional powers on the 2nd and 3rd officials, and is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Fair enough, I was behind it and Davis' body shielded it.

I can get to Manchester from Southampton quicker than I can get to Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth or Yeovil.

Funny you should mention that... see above. And yeah, Saints v Portsmouth isn't a derby. It's a local rivalry.

Originally derbies are only matches within the same town/city, due to media hype, that now gets extended to any kind of rivalry with a geographical similarity, which is of course nonsense. The Dockyard Derby and various South Coast derbies between the likes of Brighton and Plymouth are symptomatic of this daft rubbish. It takes hours to get between some south coast teams in matches the media claims are derbies, yet I don't see anyone pitching Southend v Hartlepool as an east coast derby, for instance. Cardiff/Swansea is a rivalry, but it isn't a "derby", though because of the lack of other options ( ) it's referred to as the "South Wales Derby". The cities are 40 miles apart and since 1974 have been in different counties. It's a local rivalry with the locality being South Wales. My mandatory Newport County mention here would point out that Newport is 4 times closer to Cardiff than Swansea is, and they actually share a border, which Swansea and Cardiff don't. But that "rivalry" is as one-way as Saints/Bournemouth. Derby v Forest isn't a derby according to the original definition either, but Forest v Notts County is (subject to some argument about county boundaries in Nottinghamshire). There's no correlation between rivalry and derby, derbies are only about proximity.

I didn't actually bother to watch it, but my Facebook feed from early evening filled with LOLlanas.

I'd say nearer minutes. Apart from anything else, the stadiums aren't identical so I have no idea why anyone would assume the capacities were.

The standard responses from the 2 or 3 times this has gone around this forum are "foul on Sterling by Fonte" in the Kevin Friend game, and "handball by Fonte not given" in the Newcastle game which got us 2 more points. Even then you can still argue Friend cost us a 6 point swing to Liverpool and 5th or 6th place, thereby avoiding the Europa qualifiers.

The strange one is that refs when not giving a foul usually signal "no foul" with their hands palms down crossing then uncrossing, or "advantage" by holding their arms out in front of them, palms up. Atkinson played advantage earlier in the game by putting his arms out in front of him, then when the ball went backwards, continued to motion like that, changing the direction he was gesticulating in, until the ball actually went forwards. He used the same gesture after the Kenedy/Cedric incident, which meant he was playing advantage to Chelsea, and that he had completely misread the linesman's signal - given that they also have earpieces in to communicate with their colleagues I can only assume they then decided not to speak any further than "no foul" (in either direction) or the linesman would have just continued to flag, realising the ref had misread his signal. Either way, complete debacle of a decision and there's no way Atkinson could see Kenedy's kick at the angle he was at anyway.

Tackle from behind where he had to go through the man to get to the ball, couldn't see much wrong with that decision, only the similar ones he didn't punish by Chelsea.

Not being funny but I was at the other end of the stadium and I saw the linesman flag AND that he'd moved his flag to his right hand and the right side of his body so Atkinson should have known exactly what it was for - it was definitely a foul even after the barge, because Kenedy kicked out at Cedric. I didn't actually see the foul, I was watching the ball, but I saw the flag go up and it was clear from around 100 yards away side on to the linesman which way he was giving the foul. (Mind you I also thought the ball might have been out when Costa kept it in, and that Hazard was in an offside position which he wasn't, and didn't remember Fabregas even having the ball, so it's interesting what you "remember").

Could have been given for either, he brought him down well inside the box well after the initial contact outside it, as well as handling the ball twice including when lying on the floor.

What would have happened was that Martin Atkinson would have given the phantom free kick for nothing he gave anyway, which was probably the best decision he made in the entire match. Overruled his linesmen twice, both times wrongly.

I actually saw Crooks play in a League Cup final, and I am in absolutely no doubt that he has nothing keeping him employed at the BBC other than the fact he's a black ex-footballer with some media experience. Because he's absolutely embarrassing on practically every level, and the more he tries to appear intelligent the worse he looks. Only one man uses phrases like "or as I call it, a penalty" and actually seems to think he's inventing the term.

They are slightly more interesting for me to watch Saints play against than clubs I have no interest whatsoever in. But not even on a par with middling Prem clubs we have some kind of run-in with over the previous 25 years or so. I like them more than Newcastle, who I don't dislike for any particular reason and sit quite nicely slap bang in the middle of the like/dislike scale.

"Trawling old threads" which were on the first page of the site with five other posts from the same day before mine, proving someone else did the trawling. Yeah, ok. Shows quite nicely how you're incapable of making logical judgements on clear evidence quite nicely, actually. Re: "Cedric was dropped", no clear evidence of that at all, he only got left out in the aftermath of head injuries.

I personally saw one bloke wearing a piece of Feyenoord training kit leaving the Korenmarkt where the incident happened as I was walking back to the other square from the hotel. The cordon of riot police between the two squares were happy enough to let me through, it was only their presence that alerted me to the fact something had happened in the 10 minutes since I'd last been there. I also saw a loud group of Arnhem fans set off from the square with the DJ towards the Korenmarkt before I left to go to the hotel, but they left before me, and there was nothing happening there when I went through Korenmarkt - so either they went the long way or the two groups weren't related - there were a LOT of Arnhem fans singing and shouting in groups like that without causing any trouble at all in both home and away legs.

I think losing one of Drinkwater or Kante, plus Schmeichel would be a closer comparison. They are overdue some injuries to key players: Schmeichel, Vardy and Wes Morgan have played every league match. Huth missed one (they conceded two away to Everton but scored 3 with Wasilewski making his only start). Albrighton has missed one. Drinkwater has missed two League matches all season (outscored Everton and lost to Liverpool). Mahrez was sub twice in October (inc away to Saints) and has started every League match other than that. Simpson wasn't first choice at the start of the season but hadn't missed a match since his first start (they dropped De Laet and Schlupp after losing 5-2 to Arsenal). Kante has played every League match since missing 4 of the first 5. They have Inler, Dyer, Andy King and either Okazaki or Ulloa on the bench and pretty much nothing else. Three injuries or suspensions out of that lot and they're midtable fodder, which is what happens to most good teams which don't have a big squad.

Quite, people don't seem to have grasped how much the new Prem tv deal gives PL clubs compared to all but the most successful continental European sides.

And that's why he's not a consistent enough Prem player - because he needs it. Glad he's getting a game, but he's not good enough at the moment to play for Saints regularly.

He might and he isn't.

I have absolutely no idea what you think is ironic or the point you're making. No-one thought he'd be dropped for Yoshida, he wasn't, and you still seem to be trying to make out this is some kind of "insight". As for "what are (sic) the vast majority of people saying now (in November)", no idea. But no-one was suggesting we picked Yoshida over Cedric, just as no-one is now - particularly as he's a lot better suited to a wing-back position than Yoshida. Thankfully, Cedric also seems to have got out of his head injury phase which led to him getting left out a few times.