Whitey Grandad

Tony Cascarino has three Saints players in his team of the week today, Perraud, Salisu and Walker-Peters.

The commentator on the early game yesterday said something to the effect of “Can Liverpool take advantage of Manchester City dropping three points yesterday”.

No I didn’t. Don’t make things up to suit your own agenda. Firmino was offside yesterday and even jumped for the ball. Did VAR cancel the goal?

Nope, not me. What the feck did Kevin Friend think that he saw to give that as a penalty? Incidents like that are destroying the game.

And and time again they don’t put it up. Which was my point. If the defensive side have the ball and it was goes out for a corner for any reason the flag doesn’t go up. It happens. Often.

That hasn't been happening.

These officials know what they are doing and they are doing what they have been told. In some cases the defender has put the ball out for a corner but because the attacker has not interfered the offside has been ignored. Had there been no attacker the defence would have cleaned up.

Yeah, right. If he had been blocked then that's probably true but a goalkeeper can be impeded without there being any actual physical contact. There were at least two attackers who were in an offside position and who were moving towards where the ball was going to drop. In my day they would have been flagged offside. Don't they count as 'impeding' the goalkeeper? I view it as a deliberate tactic.

That circumstance has already arisen several times this season.

But there have been situations where the flag has stayed down even though the attacker is clearly offside and then the defenders have conceded a corner for some reason. Shouldn’t the offside take precedence over the corner. And that’s without the possibility of an injury occurring that could have been avoided.

I think the decision to go with Forster instead of McCarthy has a lot todo with our improved results. Sure, Forster has his weaknesses and we need a better keeper but that can be addressed in the summer.

I thought that too at the time but I can understand his uncertainty. Laporte may have been onside but he was supported by a vanguard of offside colleagues who would have made his attempt at claiming the ball more difficult. Technically they were not ‘interfering with an opponent’ under the modern interpretations but they were a distraction and were blocking his possible approach to the ball. Laporte had it easy because his flanks were protected.

I loved the bit at the end when he and Forster embraced. Perraud didn’t even come up to Fraser’s chin.

That’s how things used to be and that’s how I think things should be. Offside is offside.

Meh, he could have drawn that on after the game with his lipstick

We both thought that Armstrong hadn’t touched Laporte and that he was overreacting.

Ours is international size, like most of the others. 1m longer than Anfield and the same width.

Absolute nonsense. They won’t play next week because it’s a winter break so they’re jetting off to Saudi Arabia instead.

Good news.

I thought that the new tickets were barcode only so in case this ever happened to me I did an experiment and made printed copy of them. They didn’t work though and it’s possible that they are NFC cards.

Covid status checking is still in place at St. Mary’s according to the emails I received today.

Very quiet everywhere.

At my age you have your priorities.

Quite understandable. The problem with all this testing is that you can’t get excited about going or look forward to the trip until you’re actually there. We’ve just come back from a two week trip to Barbados which involved a one week cruise. We each had five separate tests. A PCR to get into Barbados, a PCR two days before the cruise, an LF just before boarding, an LF on disembarking, another PCR on landing at Heathrow. I took a gamble by going to the Tottenham game but I wore a mask all the way through it.

Well that’s not true. I’m guessing that you haven’t been to the other 95%.