Whitey Grandad

I thought everybody had to buy their own ticket under the new regime?

There was a period in the second half where all our team were retreating to the edge of our penalty area. It just invites the opposition to come and have a go at us. Pardew spotted it straight away but when the whole team is affected by the jitters it's difficult to get them to hold their nerve.

It wasn't a goal-kick, it was a kick from his hands (if you're referring to the one I think you're referring to :smt017).

Because we drew 2-2. Let me put it this way: James gave them a goal for free.

Simples. We were winning 1-0 and he gives away the most stupid, pointless, predictable penalty that you will ever see. I would have been happy with 1-0.

Er, yes...

You're right, but the disappointment is because we should have won this one.

Kelvin tipped it onto the post, so it was valid. There was a lot of encroachment, though, so if anybody else had stuck it away it may have been different.

I wouldn't miss Schneiderlin and perhaps not Lallana but the roof's useful when it's raining.

Quite right. Nothing personal, this is business. If you had somebody working for you who made that many mistakes and was buggering up your whole enterprise you'd get rid of them pronto.

How close?

If he has been ill then I will forgive him a couple of off-colour performances.

I could't see him. The two seats at the front of the directors' area were empty.

If that's the case then he should never play for us again.

There was one occasion where he was wide on the right and had been nowhere near offside at any time during the move, but apart from that he was yards offside when he should not have been. It was a criminal waste of an attack.

I thought the ref got everything spot on. The assistant on the Kingsland side got one definitley wrong and there were a couple that looked suspicious but apart from that, I couldn't fault them.

The most constructive thing that we could do is keep James away from right back. He cost us 2 points today and he has cost us goals all season. It was a stupid, pointless lunge and we just cannot afford to keep indulging him in that position. He is too slow and is never going to be a full back, no amount of positive attitude or training is going to change that. He might become an acceptable midfielder, but today must be the last chance that he ever gets to throw away a game.

James was awful, has always been awful and should never, ever be let anywhere near the right-back position ever, ever, again.

Wasn't that before the Act of Union, so presumably you mean the English at that tim? Please don't include me in 'we'. Even I wasn't a twinkle then and the sins of the fathers and all that...

What do you mean, 'we'?

Just because the big Island sometime called 'Ireland' is one of the british isles does not mean that it is part of the nation of Britain, 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' to give it its full title. It is a historical term to differentiate it from little britain, which is in France and is now called 'Brittany'. Great britain was originally just the big island on which most of us live, and technically did not include the smaller islands one of which is the Isle of Wight. Geographically the complete set of islands is called the British Isles. The big island to the west was called Hibernia in roman times and is now generally known as Ireland. I don't have a problem with that. Can we please make a distinction between geography and politics? I've looked at the handball again and it happened so quickly that I'm prepared to accept that it is just one of those things that sometimes happens. There were hundreds of refereeing decisions made in that game and this was just one of them. We can't have a plebicite for every one of them. It's only a game, isn't it?

Please don't micturate on our bonfire. A man has to have a dream.

But who provides those video feeds? - normally the host nation. They will not therefore be impartial. The technicians could select the angles that suited their nation's best interests. I've seen many false video decisions in cricket and rugby and don't get me started on the pontifications I've seen in Sky's football coverage based on inconclusive evidence. It would only be passing the buck and would keep holding up the flow of the game. Then we'd have advert breaks whenever a decision was referred and we'd end up like american football. Somewhere somebody has to make a decision sometime. What we need are better referees and assistants.

Video evidence is not always conclusive and can often be misleading. If you're going to have another couple of referees, stick them down alongside the pitch.

If we are going to talk about replaying a match because of this one particular bad decision then we would have to review all of the games that were played in the group stages. The competition was extended so that more countries could participate, and that's when the seedings started in earnest. How many teams were in the finals in England in 1966? Wasn't it only 16? Then we went to 24 and now it's 32. In order to accommodate all the new teams then seeding was introduced to satisfy the traditional big names. I have some sympathy with the complaints about seeding being introduced to the play-offs at a late stage, though. If this had been the situation at the start of the group stages, would it have affected the way that some of the teams played? We shall never know.