The9

I'm impressed you heard, I saw him kiss the camera or wave goodbye or whatever he did (I wasn't really looking), and I sure as hell couldn't hear him. FWIW "bated" breath means "holding your breath" in excitement or anticipation. It's got nothing to do with bait and comes from "abate", as in to stop something happening (e.g noise abatement society).

Ok, let me reword it to reflect a bit more of the detail behind that statement; "I can't understand why someone would not think the situation might be different now, and not consider that the items they could take into the ground might have changed".

Yeah, we might have got a free-kick from that, and maybe a yellow card. Still unlikely to have affected the result.

FWIW the stupidest thing I've ever had "confiscated" outside a football ground is a bottle of suncream. This was in Portugal in 2004, when it was about 30 degrees. Compared to that, not allowing laptops in seems pretty sensible.

It seems strange that we might want to tighten security on items people can take into grounds following an attempted suicide bombing of a football match? Ok, I think that's very naive. Apart from anything I wouldn't personally want to take anything that might mean I had to go through a tedious bag search, etc. although I appreciate that isn't an option for some.

I do risk assessment as part of my job, so I used my professional expertise to calculate that there would be no problem with that. 1/10 btw.

They're all a risk to some degree, far more ridiculous things were banned even before the security concerns, and people shouldn't assume things that were ok before are still ok.

So that's about a match and a half of game time total in Europa/Premier League and the 2 Capital One Cup games (one of which he did very well in). Hardly worth worrying about him not having scored is it?

I honestly thought that aside from him being a bit reluctant to give decisions full stop, which obviously favoured Stoke as the more physical side, that the non-penalty on Pelle was the only thing that made the blindest difference. All the stuff the people around me were getting rabid about (Long falling over in the box for instance) weren't fouls, and he was no worse on fouls at corners than every other ref (which is to say we probably should have had 3 penalties at every one of our corners!).

Any chance you have any stats to disprove your last sentence?

I'd say Romeu was our top 6 defensive wall 2 DM formation option, we haven't used it much recently as Clasie being fit and not playing any of the sides expected to finish top 6 means we're lined up a little less defensively.

Yes, but the ability to recall something happening for which the probability is very low anyway is not something anyone should be concerned about.

Logic which says if you're not sure you should be able to take something in (and it's a security concern elsewhere) then you should probably check or not be surprised if you can't. The security situation has changed, not surprising the rules might have.

Didn't see either of the Arnautovic incidents and didn't come away thinking any Stoke players should have had red cards. Didn't see Bojan "punch" Cedric, and didn't think any of the other things you mentioned were definitely yellow cards - and didn't notice Adam's elbows, or what Pelle was complaining about. So basically, I was 50 yards further away and saw the same amount wrong as Mason did.

Ah right, just assumed he was a presenter. Well, well done to him for having some degree of rationality in this.

Delighted to see this moved to the forum it deserved. The Portsmouth of threads in terms of belonging on the Main Board, now thunking along in L2's Muppet Show.

It quite nicely captures "I feel sorry for them for thinking killing people is a solution" for a start, which is hardly support for extremism.

What could have been an amusing response to a playground shootout instead turns into a command for necrophilia, all thanks to the missing " ' " and "e".

Ahahahahahahaaaaa, yeah ok. He's been superb in at least one match recenty.

My junior school banned footballs and I spent the ages of 7-10 kicking a tennis ball around the yard with 20 other kids. I was 18 before I attended an organised training session with a trained coach (at University) and my under 8 football was a swarm of 20 kids on a full-sized pitch all chasing the ball and seeing who could hoof it the furthest. Those things have changed beyond recognition, and you have 6 year olds learning stepovers nowadays, but playing with a tennis ball certainly won't hurt teaching a kid touch and how to control a ball, which thanks to that early experience was probably the most enduring part of my game even 10 years after I stopped running .

Could have saved yourself the hassle with a thread search. A quick "Holder-Spooner" will probably find it for you.

Klopp already seems to have doubled his usefulness to them in a few weeks, can't be hurt by the similarities to Bielsa/Pochettino's high press, Lallana doesn't have the pace to beat teams on his own and needs options around him to use his skill in retaining possession high up the pitch and then moving the ball quickly in order to create chances for others.

Bunch of stuff on Sky about "should Vardy join a top 4 club" which is the exact same load of guff. By January people will probably have forgotten he even scored in 10 straight.

I'd like to see "home games in which Saints were drawing or losing by 1 goal after 80 minutes" compared to "probability of any team scoring after 80 minutes in the Premier League" and compare the Saints figures to the frequency of "all late goals when losing by 1 goal or drawing" to see if we're any better or worse than anyone else, before anyone starts getting upset about it. You could also compare Saints goals after 80th minute when losing or drawing with goals after 80th minute when winning... Even then there's probably bias in there somewhere, winning/top sides are generally going to score more than losing/bottom sides overall too, making them more likely to score late as well.

That was a nice touch, not over the top, overtly political or crass - and coming about as it did organically from a discussion about both Hamilton's normal kits clashing with Aberdeen's.