Whitey Grandad

You don’t need VAR for that Sterling incident. You just need a referee who understands the Laws of the Game. The linesman called it correctly so I don’t see what the referee could have seen that would have led him to overrule the flag. It doesn’t matter that the ball was kicked onto Sterling’s foot by a defender, if that’s not ‘interfering with play’ then I don’t know what is.

I’m with you on this, Professor. The danger is now that the aim of the game is to win penalties rather than to score goals.

The teams were initially gathered in the traditional ends so Spurs must have one the toss. I don’t remember the sun being out. All was grey and gloomy from my seat.

If a yellow card is given at the time there is no further sanction because the referee is deemed to have seen the offence.

Armstrong didn’t have the ball so I think that’s the reason.

I can’t disagree with that.

You are aware that the ball struck his right arm? The one that’s down by his side with his hand hidden across his stomach. It’s difficult to imagine what more he could have done to get it out of the way. If the shot had hit his left arm then I might have agreed with you.

True, but in this case he was nowhere near 'flailing his arms'. The arm that the ball hit was in a natural position by his side. Even then, aiming to hit somebody's arm all the time is not the type of football that I want to watch. I agree with Tony Cascarino in The Times this morning: "Tony Cascarino: It is too easy to win a penalty – and VAR will make it worse" https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tony-cascarino-there-are-too-many-penalties-and-var-will-make-it-worse-qpbjd2lws (paywall)

No, because it’s further away and there are a lot of people in the way trying to stop you.

The problem with this interpretation of the laws is that players are going to spend the whole game aiming shots at their opponents’ arms in the hope of winning a penalty. It distorts the whole purpose of the game.

This explains the fee.

"hit his hand"? It his his arm just above the elbow. His hands were shielded by his body in a completely natural position. It's difficult to see how he could have made himself less 'big' unless he had stuffed his arms down inside his shirt and grabbed both his testicloes at the same time.

This is the sad truth.

Whoever wins the toss has choice of ends (and will kick off the second half). I believe that most teams have a gentleman's agreement that the home team's preferred direction is chosen even if the away team wins the toss. Occasionally this will be ignored if the away team think that there is an advantage due to the position of the sun or something. I think that the problem is the positioning of the away fans which I thought was due to the lack of segregation down below stairs on the concourse but I think that could be easily fixed.

Which is the right answer. That was a complete joke.

Thanks for that. Like many of us I was with our daughter in our crowd behind the goal and we were both furious about it. The arms play no part in offside decisions. I think the angle can be misleading and we would need to see several other to be certain. I'm not going to argue about it, I'm just saying that VAR would not necessarily have given him as offside (especially at Old Trafford). There was a case with Harry Kane a few weeks ago where on agle seems to show him clearly onside but the other shows him onside. The problem is hat the camera angle is never ideal. I freely admit that it's a long time since I blew my own whistle and the wording about 'heading towards goal' has now been replaced by these considerations: "The following must be considered: • distance between the offence and the goal • general direction of the play • likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball • location and number of defenders"

Yes it should, if it had been a DOGSO (see above) There's a fair bit about it here for those who care about such things. http://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules/laws/football-11-11/law-12---fouls-and-misconduct "Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offending player is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.) the offending player must be sent off." Personally I detest shirt-pulling and Chris Smalling is probably the worst culprit. It is a cancer that shold be eradicated from the game. I think that any player found retrospectively to have had a hold of an opponent's shirt should receive a suspension. Is five games enough?

I think that might have been too tight to call. Lukaku's kneecap might have been offside but only from the view that we were given. Don't forget that this was at Old Trafford. There is some immunity for disallowing a goal from 200 miles away but there are a lot of Man Uted fans about.

He was running towards the goal line, wasn't he?

Was that Steve Dunn? I remember it clearly and for some reason the referee thought that he had seen spmething that wasn't there. A couple of minutes before he had penalised us for a push so perhaps he thought that this was another one.

Why a red card? Bertrand was not running towards goal and so it was not a DOGSO.

There’s a lot in what you say but I wouldn’t consider being 1-0 up after 26 minutes as a ‘winning position’ especially at Old Trafford where teams of our status have everything stacked against them. For me, as a Saints supporter, a winning position is being 5-0 up after 5 minutes of injury time. I watched the whole match yesterday evening on Sky Game of the Day and I can appreciate why there is such a positive spirit around here. For me it was very reminiscent of our cup final defeat to them in that we made a good game of it but ultimately were beaten by a club with more financial resources and all that follows from that. After reading all the complaints about the ref I didn’t think that he was too bad. The first foul on Bertrand was not clear-cut when viewed from his position but from behind the goal you can clearly see that his shirt was being pulled and VAR would have given this one to us. But be careful what you wish for as in the long run we would have as many decisions go against us as we won. Their penalty in injury time should in my opinion have been given as a foul by Rashford on Armstrong. Rashford sees Armstrong coming and sticks his leg out across him in an unnatural position. You could just as easily claim that he was trying to trip Armstrong as that Armstrong kicked him. Ultimately, we let in three goals and that is why we lost.

Never mind that. Is she any good at left back?

The first thing she did was to cancel the ID card scheme.

Yes, he's improved under Ralph.