Whitey Grandad

Atlantic hurricanes undergo a 50 to 70 year cycle known as the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”. Or they may not.

Or regret going to live there. I know that part of East London and West Essex very well.

I’ve just watched the goals. For their first our defence was wide open. Perraud just ran back towards the centre of our goal and Meghoma stood shell-shocked out on the wing wondering if he ought to get involved somehow. Meanwhile their goalscorer had the freedom of our area to jog up to the far post and have a tap in from five yards. FFS Martin if you’re going to pick a team at the very least choose one with players in their right positions who have had some sort of training at playing with each other. Don’t just chuck them all in a bag and then tip them onto the pitch after jumbling them up a bit.

Thanks for your report. I think it proves what we all know. Possession doesn’t help you to win goals nor does it stop you conceding them.

Correct. It has its own clause in the Laws. “Delaying the restart of play”

He’s terrified of the thing and can’t bear to look at it.

So what was the point of that?

Winning can become a habit. Unfortunately so can losing.

We wouldn’t be allowed to play with only 5 on the pitch.

I had forgotten about Mara.

I’m with you on this. The TV companies go out of their way to court controversy. They are constantly trying to analyse every situation in order to generate arguments. They’ve paid a lot of money for the sport and they want to control it. It’s not that long ago that most games had no cameras present. If you missed a goal you never saw it again.

Take £30m provided McCarthy goes with him?

A penalty is “in the opinion of the referee”. Not in your opinion or mine. I watched that game and I saw nothing wrong with it. The referee actually on the pitch had a far better view than anyone who was watching it through a television camera.

I am of that age where everybody at school was addressed by their surname.

It would be. Many people will be away from home and going direct to the game from somewhere else. That would not be the way to treat cutomers who have splashed out several hundred pounds.

Never a problem, all under control. A slight miscontrol but wthout the whistle the ball would have been cleared.

Eh? And who’s Matt?

Agreed. Such possession is all very laudable when you’re in the lead but if we are level or behind is it going to lead to the necessary goals?

And on this point you are very wrong.

I hate watching on television because it bears no relation to what is happening in real life out on the pitch. It is a two dimensional attempt at making entertainment. Don’t ever believe that what you see in a flat electronic screen is anywhere near the reality. Oh, and I spent many years in television research and have several technical papers published on the subject.

It’s video game football. Nothing like the true game it always used to be. Television is the problem and with that comes the influence of big money.

No, no and thrice no. It ruins the very essence of the game. Gabbiadini wasn’t offside but Bertrand was and could have been considered to be ‘interfering’. Of course we are all biased towards Saints but others more neutral might take a more balanced view. Charlie Austin is hardly likely to be independently objective either. Lampard’s effort would have been picked up by Goal Line Technology which gives an immediate result and doesn’t slow down the game but even that is not infallible. The refs are only an issue if you don’t agree with their decisions.

Thanks for digging out the links. Most of the corrections seem to relate to a different set of officials coming to a different conclusion to the one actually on the field at the time. Again, most of these are subjective. I’m not convinced of the process of sending the on field referee to look at a monitor. The very act of doing so suggests to him that he’s got it wrong and the more times that you look a5 an incident the more you will convince yourself that an action was deliberate and intentional. Slow motion is also a big culprit in misinforming.

And two more goals 😏

Except that they weren’t. So many decisions are ‘in the opinion of the referee’ which unfortunately seldom aligns with the opinion of the football fan.