The9

FWIW I was very amused to see Elia also fling his arm out like Forster, despite being nowhere near the ball. And yeah, Onouha was offside, and the ref gave an indirect free kick, for offside.

He also spent most of Saturday pulling out wide and making room for Mané...

Chimpstitute.

Cortese would have banned all blindies on the strength of this. And probably paid someone off to move all his furniture.

He was a regular at the start of the season when they had a load of defensive injuries, he's barely played since their players got fit (and Coquelin stepped up to play DM ahead of him).

Thanks for saving me the trouble, it's wasted on here, people can't even spell players' names correctly.

What's that got to do with anything? CAF is going to be running a competition every 2 years (actually more frequently than that as they switched the cycle to non-World Cup years by holding one in 2012 and 2013) whether Blatter runs FIFA or not. They don't hold it in the summer due to the temperature (might be a heads-up for the Qatar bid there... oh, bit late) and it's been full international status for long enough that teams know what they're getting when they sign an African player. I also don't recall such complaints against the Asia Cup which has far fewer sides with high FIFA rankings than the AfCON. How would you feel if a Ghanaian told you there shouldn't be a Euro 2016 because there weren't enough Ghanaians in it for them to find it interesting? Because that's basically your argument. The two year thing, you may have a point, but we'll be having the European Nations League starting soon which is actually UEFA moving to Africa's model not the other way around. I assume the two year thing is to encourage the development of the lesser nations from having more chance of qualification if they get organised - it's a more level playing field across the continent than Europe and the top sides often miss out altogether (eg Nigeria and Cameroon recently).

The Westfield at White City has a bunch of bars at the end near the bus station, last time I went we had a good chat to some QPR fans about how cack Mark Hughes was after the game, they were all really positive about Redknapp coming in to keep them up, we put them straight... Can't remember if the bar(s) had tv with a match on though.

Seeing as you said it twice, you mean at "worst" - the superlative, not "worse" the comparative which is only used when there's one thing out of two better than it.

Is this where I mention "Saints-related"? Given that Mayuka got injured stretching for an easy tap in he failed to read properly, Mane's already back too and Saints don't have any players in the Ghana or Ivory Coast squads...

Or, seeing as I watched it live on Eurosport and ITV4... Equatorial Guinea fans chucking stuff at Ghanaians (when 2-0 down at half time and then when they went 3-0 down), who evacuated the stand on 80 minutes to pitch up behind the adverts near one goal out of debris range, and half an hour of nothing much, with the sides about to restart when the police chopper arrived and swirled up a load of debris. No-one went on the pitch at any point apart from the playing squads and a few administrators. The problem was the peed-off E-Guineans lobbing stuff (mainly bottles, no-one has said if they were glass or plastic) at the away fans and away dugout. Not ideal by any means, but nothing close to a riot or war. I was vaguely amused as CAF insisting that Tunisia were to blame for the problems in the last Eq. Guinea match and threatening to ban Tunisia for not apologising for slating the ref after an appalling 90th minute penalty decision (and pretty soft winning free kick award in extra time) now looks like an incredibly bad choice of ally in backing the Equi-Guineans. Though they also banned the ref for 6 months. The fudge on the subsequent punishment is incredible - suspended ground closure for Eq. Guinea as long as they behave themselves in the remaining 3rd/4th place match on Saturday - which allows CAF to hold the match, not punish the hosts and worsen the situation, and try and control the fans with the threat of punishment later, without the problem of playing a high profile match which is already probably a sell out behind closed doors. So basically, CAF saying "thanks for hosting at short notice, you've got us over a barrel, let's just get out of here, don't do it again".

Personally I was fine clapping Theo the first time and never had any time for Oxlade-Chamberlain's impatient jump out of the forthcoming Championship season into the England squad. Chambers wasn't even worth acknowledgement, Shaw the same, Lambert got a cheer at Anfield, Lovren got hammered, Lallana will get hammered at St Mary's unless he "chicken judas"es playing in the match. Two things struck me as interesting from that article: to see that Oxlade-Chamberlain's father has just taken over as his agent (again?), so keep an eye out for him agitating for a move soon, and secondly that Chambers' agency has a policy of not speaking to the media - given that some of their job is literally to promote him in the media.

I can't see how Saints could be in any way at fault in selling a player they didn't really want to sell, so I'm pretty sure any punishment would be aimed in the buying club's direction. As for "waaah waah the FA (sic) don't want us in Europe", why would the FA care? The audit trail of money from the Champions League goes pretty much nowhere near them, and the national coefficient isn't going to get hammered by Saints any more than from Hull, Swansea, Wigan and Millwall qualifying for Europe in the past 12 years. Even the Premier League (who have nothing to do with the punishment) should see Saints' success as an opportunity to market a "new" top brand and an "exciting underdog success story" to their international audience rather than the endless dirge of the same 4 clubs winning stuff.

So to recap, no obviously daft stuff like guns and knives, no glass containers (unless you're in the Chapel so you're nowhere near the away fans), no bottle tops (again mostly enforced in Northam), and expect them to have a look through your bag... Unless it's a Saints merchandise bag, in which case they generally don't check!

Ex-Skate loanee Miles Storey (stepover monkey in green boots who was guff against Newport at Fratton) has pitched up at Newport. It seems some of their ex-rubbish takes longer than others to improve... one stepover and a booking in his 20 minutes last weekend. Oh, and that "controversial" defeat at Newport for the Skates? The one with the "not interfering" offside goal? Another camera angle pitched up a couple of weeks ago showing that the "not-interfering" player who was not given offside for the goal in their 1-0 defeat wasn't even offside when the ball was played. So not controversial then. Plus Newport have shipped 7 goals and lost both matches since - probably should have realised the wheels were coming off when they only snuck past Portsmouth...

Which also happened to be reduced price tickets.

And just about to launch themselves back into the European campaigns which are the reason they're not already above us.

He may already have an option to buy with one as well...

The bit in bold was shown to be blatantly untrue on MotD2 who showed Bertrand looking away from the ball as he ran towards the contact, generously you could claim looking up the wing to where his options were, a cynic would say he was sizing up which bit of Barrow he was going to collect with his follow-through.

He's an idiot enforcing the laws completely accurately, however.

If he wasn't able to control where his leg went after glancing the ball he was pretty much meeting all the criteria for unnecessary force and dangerous. You can win the ball completely cleanly but if your follow through endangers an opponent it's a red. As for "a decade ago it would be a good challenge", tell that to Chris Marsden who was sent off for a two footer which finished a yard short of Patrick Vieira, based on his intent alone.

I'm quite stunned about the number of morons who don't know the laws of the game. http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/afdeveloping/refereeing/law_12_fouls_misconduct_en_47379.pdf Careless is a foul, reckless is a yellow card, with excessive force (dangerous) is a red card. Reckless is "acted with complete disregard of the danger to, or consequences for, his opponent" Excessive force is "far exceeded the necessary use of force and is in danger of injuring his opponent". It was unnecessarily forceful and never mind "in danger of", he actually injured the opponent, it's a red card every day of the week and has been since the laws were changed to say this about 18 months ago.

Which coincided with Arsenal having a strike force of about 5 nippy midgets. You could see why the "tall good at heading but unable to pass" bloke was replaced by the "decent enough at passing bloke who's relatively weak in the air".

Pessimist, I'm expecting us to be a point ahead of Chelsea with City guaranteed 3rd.

Just to add some value to this thread, here's a couple of pictures of the bloke in the San Siro shop cutting up Osvaldo's name to make letters to use for Podolski. I took them on Saturday before the stadium tour.