Whitey Grandad

Me neither. I was hoping for a refund of the last three games before deciding on my February options. From the club on Friday 5th January, "The club has already processed pro rata refunds to all Season Ticket holders for the first six home fixtures for the 2020/21 season, with refunds for the Manchester City, West Ham United and Liverpool matches being processed for fans that didn’t attend those games."

We didn't have to leave the EU in order to have blue passports. We could had had any colour we wanted although most of the world has various shades of red, green, blue or black. My old passports are more black than blue. To describe them as blue would be weird.

Different people, innit.

Attributed to various people including Sir Alex Ferguson usually as “attack wins you games, defence wins you titles” but goes back further in the US as "Offense wins games, defense wins championships”. The original quote appears to be "Offense sells tickets; Defense wins championships" by Dave Thorson (me neither) a basketball coach.

Hi Alpine, good to see you’re still around. Shame you can’t see the games, it’s some of the best football we’ve played in years.

Did just enough. Another 1-0 home win in the cup. Clean sheet against Arsenal is always pleasant.

Once we have got a lead with a high press there is less incentive to go chasing all over the pitch.

Correct. No replay.

These games usually go to the team that wants it more. Straight for their throats and never let the grip slacken ought to do it.

The Offside Law is the gift that keeps on giving Carrying on from our discussion yesterday, isn’t this interpretation just a continuation of the old ‘played-on’ consideration? If the moment Mings touches the ball any opponent is free to compete for it despite running back from being well offside doesn’t that amount to the same thing? The ball wasn’t even under his control before he got tackled.

Yep. That’s cheap.

Fair enough. I don’t think any of us are saying the Law was necessarily incorrectly applied, just that it’s a bad interpretation. Now that it has been publicised we can expect to see more incidents of a similar type. What I find interesting is how May professionals in the game were surprised by this. The offside law has got ridiculously complicated with too many subjective elements in my opinion. Many of the interpretations originate from the IFAB and if you’re getting really desperate for something to read you might want to look at these examples. One of them involves Saints. https://www.pcsasoccer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ifab-law-11-illustrations.pdf

At the time Peter Walton couldn’t understand the decision and thought it was wrong. He admitted next morning that according to the interpretation of The Laws it was correct. It isn’t a question of not understanding the implementation, it’s a question of not agreeing with it. I remember the old days of being ‘played on’. Don’t forget that I have been playing, refereeing and watching football for well over fifty years and my father before me played in the Isthmian League and for the RAF team during the war. He used to tell me of all sorts of obscure rules such as being allowed to charge the goalkeeper. As a full back it was his job at corners to stand in front of the keeper and protect him from being barged into the net. There was none of this modern bollocks about ‘interfering with play’. If you were offside it was an indirect free kick.

Ironically my daughter herself is classified as a key worker and she has to leave her three kids at home for the two hours a day that she goes in.

I wouldn’t want to get too worked up over just one example but when most of the class is going in then it makes you raise your eyebrows. Are all the parents key workers who are working from home? It also raises the question as to why the school has bothered to close anyway. This is playing havoc with the development of those young kids who are not going to school.

Of course the City player is competing. He’s running flat out towards Mings. He was well offside when the ball was kicked and there’s no such thing as ‘played on’. I would consider that he was “making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball“. Whatever. It’s a ridiculous interpretation of the law which if it continues will lead to ‘goalhangers’ hovering a few yards upfield of the defenders.

Could you manage the high press?

It’s what bears do.

Indeed he is and does.

Yes, that was awful. Mings was clearly affected by the presence of an offside player.

I’ve never taken you for a chicken fingerer 😧

That’s very revealing but to be a bit picky shouldn’t it be just GB that’s tucked away in the naughty corner with Northern Ireland in some other loop?

It is widely known that Joe Biden had a speech impediment as a child and he has been commended for overcoming it and succeeding despite his stutter.

Nigella Lawson has a recipe of the day on her website. Yesterday it was “Bitter Orange Tart”. ’nuff said https://www.nigella.com/recipes/bitter-orange-tart

An 8 is twice as good as a 4