Whitey Grandad

They will be reprimanded but behind closed doors. Make no mistake, the referees want to get it right and are mortified when they don’t. VAR is supposed to give them extra counselling.

I said earlier that the referee could have consulted his assistant in order to buy some time or asked to go and see a replay of the incident on the pitchside monitor. I think that in previous times before the presence of VAR he would have sought other advice.

Quite. Nobody comes out of this looking good. That makes two red cards that we have had rescinded recently.

The sale of VVD?

I presume that he cannot play on Saturday so that only leaves four games for him to feature. Maybe he was brought here with a view to taking a good look at him.

Far too young. The same age as my wife’s sister. I remember his first games. He had a big price tag to live up to.

Some top managers also rotate their goalkeepers. Not only that but they regularly have different players for different games!

Care to elaborate?

They usually decide between themselves which way it goes. Sometimes there is a possibility of a doubt and you will see the referee pointing discreetly with his hand but not his arm. In Sunday League football the linesman are usually provided by the two teams and the instructions are usually “ball in or out of play and offsides” but the referee will keep a close watch on them, particularly for the offsides. Are you sure that Mike Dean didn’t add some condition upon his instructions?

Respect! ✊

Or another referee...

You could say that about anything that doesn’t work properly. “In theory it works perfectly”. There is also the converse in a famous quote, “this is all very well in practice. But how does it work out in theory?”

He was good on the pitch but these days he is a great proponent of VAR so I have changed my mind over him.

India has just reached its highest daily deaths total of around 3689 in a population twenty times that of the UK. The highest figure in the UK was around the end of January at about 1800. There is a widespread view that their official figures are an understatement. Each death is of course a tragedy.

Patently part of the problem would have been decontaminating the common areas that the poor precious hyperstars would have used. Unbelievable

Bank Holiday Monday innit

What I find really annoying is that when they are a co-commentator they their inexperience leads them to think that they have to say something all the time. They won’t shut up talking. They don’t give any insights, they merely tell us what we’ve just seen. I don’t approve of violence against women but if they were sitting next time at a live match I would not hold myself responsible. *other genders of commentators are available.

Thanks, but I knew that already. These are not measures that were earlier than planned though, are they.

That’s good to hear. What are they because a good the government the dates are ‘not before’ 17th May and not before 21st June.

Agreed, except that these refs are only doing what they have been told to do.

Yes, the vaccination programme has been very impressive and the sooner the world gets some protection the better. Personally I can’t see the date of 21st June being brought forward because too many things have to be done before then but some measures could surely be relaxed now with no increase in perceived threats. I don’t play golf and have no interest in it but why were golf courses closed?

Worry is not the right word but I am considerate of the lives of other people and their jobs, not that they all have jobs. Yes, I am nearly 72 but high risk group doesn’t include me. I know people who are in it. Over the last year I have lost several friends and colleagues, none of them to Covid. One in New Zealand (72) to a heart attack, one in his fifties to an aortic aneurysm, one at 55 to an aggressive brain tumour, several before then at 54, 61, 64 to various cancers. I know of no one in my small circle who has had Covid. Life is a risky business. None of us is going to come out of it alive. It is very unlikely to kill me but I know the risks and how to minimise them. Beer queues are indeed trivial and easily avoided. This lockdown has been a lot stricter than just that. My lifestyle doesn’t involve closed contact with people and physical contact is extremely unlikely to give you the disease. This has been the mistake from the beginning. It’s an airborne infective agent. You won’t catch it outside and you won’t catch it by touching gate posts. Did I mention large groups? Did I mention foreign countries?

But many people can’t work! And many more will not have a job to return to.

They train at it. My father used to go and watch the Spurs training at Cheshunt back in the 1960s. One of their trainers used to sit on a stool at the edge of the ‘D’ and shout at the forwards “Make him foul you!”