The9

Suuuuuuuuuper Chelsea.

Come to think of it, also in 2003 (over 10 years after the Wales original) I heard Dave Ford trying to get "Antti Niemi, came down from Hearts one night Antti Niemi saves everything in sight Antti Niemi, we're all right behind you"... going in Bucharest, so... yeah.

It's two commas away from being perfectly coherent, as opposed to rather convoluted.

I don't think we could have been much more efficient than we were last season with our core defensive performances, the problems were consecutive injuries and suspensions to Wanyama and Schneiderlin for the last couple of months of the season leaving us below par in midfield. It could possibly have been the usual "I'm off" malaise spreading through the squad who inevitably know when someone is planning on leaving before the media or management do - makes it hard to feel you should give 100% for the cause when others are planning on jumping ship and aren't.

Doesn't work, penalty appeals could go 5 minutes before play next stops - what if the opposition scores? Disallow the goal and award a penalty for 5 minutes ago? Reset the game clock? Too much needs to change to make it viable. The "respect" stuff, well that's down to refs having the balls to actually enforce existing regulations, when was the last time you saw a yellow card for waving an imaginary yellow card? Or a free kick for someone who didn't have to fall over first when being fouled?

It seems fairly obvious to me that every significant decision is being conveyed from tv to the 4th Official and directly to the referee where there is time for the referee to appraise the situation (e.g. melees, delay between foul being given and card being given where there is significant arguing from either side about the decision). They're all getting the Zidane Headbutt treatment - someone sees a video near the technical area and the ref does as advised, but only where there's time to get the judgement back first. I'm still completely against piecemeal technology (apart from the proven goal-line stuff which we've seen to be flawless), it's got to be all or nothing more for me - get refs off the pitch altogether and rule everything using big screens and ONLY video tech. FWIW I've been watching a lot of College American Football this year and the number of on-field decisions that are being reviewed is getting completely out of hand - any big decisions can be reviewed by the TV booth, and there are 3 coach's challenges per team which cost a timeout if wrong. But that's a sport with a clock that stops between plays, takes 3 hours to play and has a LOT of natural stoppages. There aren't enough breaks in football and numerous potential "double jeopardy" situations which it would be difficult to explain to a lot of fans who have no idea what's been given at the best of times.

Is it worth me pointing out that Wales have been using "Can't take my eyes off you" as a song since 1993, originally because BBC Wales used the Andy Williams version in an advertising campaign for their matches? So they're only 22 years behind on that one.

I remember him winning the header from the corner after, with the ref not having noticed his mouthful of blood.

The stuff about "errors evening out" has absolutely no basis in fact. What are the chances of Kevin Friend going to give us two completely unwarranted penalties against Liverpool? Rather than "evening out", what actually happens is that bad decisions just happen, sometimes in your favour, others not. Depending on when and how they happen, they have a completely arbitrary impact. Friend giving the early penalty for the foul on Djuricic last season means Liverpool have 10 men, Coutinho doesn't score a minute or two later, we're probably two points better off, and if everything else stays the same, we go directly to the Group Stages of the Europa League. Fonte getting penalised for handball in the last minute against Newcastle costs us two points, but why would you take that incident and not Friend giving us a wrong free kick decision on halfway against Liverpool later in the same match as the "evening out"? It's completely arbitrary - and also ignores the evidence that attacking teams get more penalties, etc so are more likely to benefit than "worse" teams too. There aren't even an equal number of decisions made for and against the different Premier League teams in a season, so there is no possible way they "even out". As for managers intimidating, it's been going on for years, different refs will react in different ways, some will probably even be harsher on the intimidators to prove to themselves they are "fair".

Van Aanholt actually looked very good going forward against Everton, but defensively...

Far from tedious nitpicking, it was a completely reasonable question in response to comments about our owner made a full month after the person you blamed for the situation had left. I'd say that was pretty reasonable - and also worth your clarification, because it wasn't obvious why that would be the case. The bit about Clasie and Tadic was a vaguely amusing dig though.

All that proves is that we like to rest important players against teams we can beat. Most recently when Cedric was left out for Yoshida we also replaced Fonte with Caulker and Bertrand with Targett, does that tell you anything about Fonte and Bertrand's ability?

It's not even that he occasionally switches off for me, it's his stubborn insistence on trying to win the ball when it isn't there, lunging past players and getting the wrong side. The awful back pass and the hack straight to the opposition when Stekelenburg told him to find the crowd were just poor one-off decisions, the wrong side thing is a persistent problem. He seems to operate in a slightly different parallel to everyone else in terms of direction changes too, like he's on ice and not grass, zooming past in all directions trying to get back where he came from. It's weird. FWIW his passing has massively improved from when we signed him and he hit everything with his ankle and basically bobbled it at his defensive colleagues.

Well this is an interesting example of proposing something that absolutely no-one thinks will happen, claiming the opposite would be a mistake - something the vast majority of people would agree, and then claiming to have some kind of wisdom based on avoiding a situation that no-one thinks would be a good idea in the first place. Are you St George, and how did you persuade Koeman not to do this?

I can't see us losing for as long as their CB partnership is Wes Brown and Seb Coates, and they have Cattermole hammering around fouling in front of them, they're just not any good. We'd have to sleepwalk BOTH halves (like we did last season) to not get a win this time.

Basically we had 16.085 last year. That was 16.085 England coefficient and 0.000 Saints coefficient. We have 1.5 points of our own this year from the EL Play-Off elimination. The base England score is, from 2011/12 onwards: 3.050 + 3.285 + 3.357 + 2.714 (total 12.406) + whatever the England score is for this season; currently this season it is = 1.050 but every win by an English side in CL and EL adds to the total accumulated (see previous message), which is then divided by 8 (no. of English teams in Europe) to give the annual figure. So we start on 12.406 for English clubs' previous seasons, plus our 1.500 this season, giving 13.9 so far. We therefore need the English teams to rack up another 2.186 points to improve our coefficient from last season's 16.085. To get that 2.185 more points, as there are 8 English teams playing in Europe this season they'll need to get 2.185x8=17.48 more points in total across all teams, of which 1.050 have been gained, leaving another 16.43 to get from all other results. That can be done by the method below: (National Club Coefficient) Points system 1. Each team gets two points for a win and one point for a draw (points are halved for matches in the qualifying and play-off rounds). 2. Clubs that reach the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals or final of the UEFA Champions League, or the quarter-finals, semi-finals or final of the UEFA Europa League, are awarded an extra point for each round. 3. In addition, four points are awarded for participation in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League (these are already in the 1.050 gained though) and four points for qualifying for the round of 16. For info: the total national coefficient scores since 2011/12 have been: 15.250 16.428 16.785 13.571 giving a 4 year total of 62.034.[/i]

Who we played or lost to doesn't matter, only the round we reached, and the performance of the other clubs from England in Europe. Our coefficient next season may well be lower, unless the CL teams and EL teams do very well. England's national coefficient is dropping anyway due to Man U and Chelsea's final appearances drifting off into the sunset (and England's score was 100% of our score last time), it's around 14 compared to around 16 at the moment, and we've only added 1.5 points of our own. I don't need to do the maths, some other idiot is doing it, but bear in mind this doesn't include England's 2015/16 points total as that won't be determined until the last English team is out of Europe: http://www.footballseeding.com/club-ranking/a2016-2017/ Scoring is explained here: http://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/uefarankings/club/index.html : Coefficient calculation Clubs' coefficients are determined by the sum of all points won in the previous five years (1.5 for Saints), plus 20% of the association coefficient over the same period. UEFA Champions League points system First qualifying round elimination – 0.5 points Second qualifying round elimination – 1 point Group stage participation – 4 points Group stage win – 2 points Group stage draw – 1 point Round of 16 participation – 4 points UEFA Europa League points system First qualifying round elimination – 0.25 points Second qualifying round elimination – 0.5 points Third qualifying round elimination – 1 point Play-off elimination – 1.5 points Group stage win – 2 points Group stage draw – 1 point Since 2009/10, clubs have been guaranteed a minimum of two points if they reach the group stage and are awarded an additional point if they get to the quarter-finals, semi-finals or final We've missed out on a shedload of points not making the Group stage though, 6 matches, potentially 12 more points for 6 wins, plus 1 per round after that.

Is no-one else going to say "affects"? It's even right in the text lifted from the website. Tch. Anyway, I seem to recall dental checks have been a thing for years in football, I remember Man U used to do them about 20 years ago, can't remember why but some kind of general health indicator.

They didn't threaten us, they had lots of long range shots that didn't go anywhere near the goal. Vardy's finishing isn't particularly good, but he's getting a lot of chances - and Leicester created much better chances that they put off target as well as a lot more on target. I'm not saying it was acceptable that we put that little effort in and certainly against better sides we'd have conceded, I'm saying that we still looked like we weren't going to concede against Bournemouth even without looking anywhere near the top of our game, and that's how poor Bournemouth were (and also how well-drilled we are defensively).

Nope, just that they were still much worse than us over the 90 minutes, and despite us being utter garbage in the second half they still only looked like scoring once.

He wasn't as good as Alderweireld. I'd also note that Fonte has a rather significant body of work suggesting he's not crap, as opposed to Yoshida, who has rather the opposite, with one exception in very recent memory.

2007/8 in the last 16, 1-0 down to Sporting in the first leg. Megson in charge (took over from Sammy Lee)... http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/season=2008/matches/round=15121/match=301957/index.html A Al Habsi, N Hunt, G Cahill, A Meite, J Samuel, J O'Brien, D Guthrie, A Teymourian (D Braaten, 71), S Giannakopoulos, R Vaz Te, H Helguson (N Woolfe, 76) Subs not used: R Sissons, I Walker, Z Harsanyi, S Jamieson, J Sinclair Following league game (away to Wigan, lost 1-0), players who played in both games in bold. A Al Habsi, G Steinsson, A O'Brien, G Cahill (G McCann, 69), R Gardner, K Nolan, I Campo, T Cohen (G Rasiak, 42), E Diouf (J O'Brien, 46), K Davies, M Taylor Subs not used: A Meite, I Walker 10 outfield changes, and only 1 outfield player even in both squads. They stayed up by a point. Finished 26 points ahead of Derby though.

Just having a look to see when, where and who(m).

Fairly sure Gary Megson at Bolton played their reserves in the EL in an attempt to stay in the Prem as well.

Was it the backpass that did it for you?