sandwichsaint

Fair comment, there is no obvious control group or baseline against which to judge it (except the purely subjective measure of how much you 'enjoyed' watching the previous version of football as against the current one). You have swapped a net gain of 'more correct decisions' for a game that now appears to have more diving/cheating/appealing, more breaks in play, possibly more pressure on the ref (v refs bottling big decisions and relying on somebody else to have a second look for them). Halves that routinely run to 50 mins+. And arguably fewer (LOL!) talking points; controversies and we wuz robbed stories are part of the game's weft and weave. Take those away and it's all run by three blokes in a car park 500 miles away. I've never been to a VAR game but it must be bizarre, players and fans standing around for two minutes plus with no idea if you're supposed to be celebrating a goal or not. I'm sure the modern family-fans and the Xbox/FIFA generation lap it all up but it's not for me.

Time for an exclusion zone around refs? We had got rid of a lot of this in our football a few years ago and did for one season (?) (send for the9) have a policy where only the captain could speak to the ref. The mob handling/rushing/appealing everything is spoiling what has otherwise been the 'best' WC for me since Argentine 78. Once the ref blows his whistle for a decision any player encroaching within 5m of the ref yellow, within 2.5m of the ref, red card! I never wanted VAR and would be quite happy if they binned it tomorrow and went back to just goal line technology. I accept that won't happen and that it's still in it's infancy but even with that it is shambolic as currently operated (it needs big screen replays and audible comms between the ref and the truck). It can't cover for a weak or incompetent ref, I just LOL every time there's a bad decision at all those who thought it would be 100% and we would never ever ever see a wrong decision again. We have seen just as many 'wrong' decisions with it as before we had it.

poor man's Maguire?

Let's do it, AGBOOLA BALL CHANNON DAVIES RON EKLUND FRANK SAUL GOLAC HOLLYWOOD DENNIS IAN DOWIE JONES PAUL KEEGAN LAMBERT SRL MARIAN PAHARS NICK HOLMES OSGOOD PAINE TERRY Q RICHARDS DEAN STEVE MILLS TERRY CURRAN ULLRICH VAN GOEBEL VAN DIJK (booo) WILLIAMS STEVE X Y Z Proper footballers and I've seen them all.

Where does CMFG fit into all this?

Going out on a limb here (kill me now), I quite like it! There's only so many things you can do with red n white stripes; grab a red tee shirt, cutesy black trim, slap a deckchair canvas on the front, what's not to like? It's not Sunland Stoke or Sheff Utd, it's a modern take on a traditional classic. I like the black shorts, it would have been a leap of faith to have blue shorts but that would be cool too. Black and red hooped socks are a bit Littlewoods catalogue/Scottish Div 2 but you can't always get what you want.

Profile on Gareth Southgate on 5L last night mentioned it, it was a good piece with Alan Smith (ex Palace manager) who was managing the Palace youth teams at the time. He would have been released from Saints at about 13-14 by the sounds of it (references in the piece to him playing for Palace 15's and 16's), I don't know how long he was actually with us?

Slightly premature, my understanding is that as an Egyptian passport holder he can visit for up to 6 months a year, but he can't work. At the moment he has no 'work' role at Chelsea, so he can drop in and out as he pleases. Whether it pleases him to come to somewhere where he's person non grata is a mute point. Maybe Ken Bates has got his name back in the headlines at just the right time? Or not:mcinnes:

Didn't realise golf was so popular in Nairobi?

Cracking series, definitely worth going past the funny voice effects yesterday to listen to the content. I caught the one with Nigel Owens (gay rugby ref) last week, brilliant stuff. Also the one with Bobby George was good too. All available to download.

What a knobb.

What a pair of deadweights, neither of them would get anywhere near our side.

Anybody see tonite's game? Cute flick from Jonno Quick.

Side on, side on, ..... none of them received a standing ovation.

From the man that thinks Everton fans have had a more enjoyable season than Wolves fans.

But who can buy the best house? A millionaire in Epsom or a bin man in Bridlington? The millionaire would be laughed out of town and the bin man would live pretty comfortably.

And there's the problem right there, 24hrs after the lord mayor's show but are we really that much further on? Guess we'll now get to test MLG's theory that we are better off rebuilding in the Prem than the Champ. We have an absent owner who had to borrow money (a lot of money) to buy the club, who appears to think that MP2 was sufficient for three quarters of the season, and who thought swapping VVD for Carillo represented a decent window for a team who were struggling. That shopping list would cost 50m for the basics range, 100m-plus for anything decent and upto 200m for the finest range. Poll please mods-will we net-spend 50m, 100m or 200m this summer?

For all those that missed out this season, what price are we to go down next season?

Yes if we win it will all be forgotten .... if we don't win then we'll never know the effect of the disruption on our pre-match routine and an hours-plus coach ride in rush hour traffic. Low move by them.

Utter joke, if Swansea can't host switch the game to Cardiff. (not sure if serious but seriously peed off!)

Ouch:blush:

Epic fail:blush: It didn't make much sense when I wrote it cos I couldn't work out when AL would have been in a relegation slog! It also rather undermines the point that STs were put out cheap in terms of relegation, obvs what I meant to say was when we get the near the top of the champs but we are not guaranteed automatic we quickly get the tickets out at a decent price irrespective of whether we go up or not. Doh!

I remember going to WBA a few years ago, the game where Lallana came on and scored, when they and us were both deep in the PL mire with about 4 games to go. They were selling early bird season tickets for about £299 irrespective of which league the club ended up in the next year. If the club had any sense they would be putting them out now at a considerable discount - if we stay up the PL money covers any loss. You could argue that a lot of people will renew at full price anyway, but it looks like there are any number of people who won't - the club needs to find a way to keep it's core support if it goes down and without discounting now and locking people into another season it will surely be harder to get people back next year, at full or near full price, and once the big names have all drifted away.

Wouldn't have counted, Gabi was a yard off-side in the build-up.

The wonders of hindsight: tons of mentions for Brighton and Bournemouth, not very many for West Brom. As ever the bookies will be having the biggest and best holiday.