Whitey Grandad

"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 I freely admit that it's a long time since I blew my own whistle and the wording about 'heading towards goal' has now been replaced by these considerations: "The following must be considered: • distance between the offence and the goal • general direction of the play • likelihood of keeping or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.

Not Stephens, I agree there. Certainly not Stephens. God No! I would have thought that Armstrong on but I can see the dilemma about who to replace. Possibly PEH or JWP. If the team is trained properly then another midfielder who is drilled in the same system should not have been a problem. Quite a few of them seemed to have heavy legs in the last ten minutes or so. If nothing else somebody could have gone down for lengthy treatment so as to give evrybody a breather. Whether players like being subbed or know shouldn't come into it. If it's for tactical reasons then they should accept it. They're not all overpaid goalkeeprs with big egos.

I agree with all of this. What is it with this ridiculously loud racket that they subject us to? Playing loud noise does not create an atmospher, it smothers it.

I like him. He is improving every game but stil has a long way to go. Our problem is that because we are short of players we have to play him whilst he is learning his trade. Maybe a spell on loan at a Championship side would have helped, or have I missed that somewhere?

I tend to agree with you. Valery in paarticular seemd very tired both mentally and physically in the latter stages. I am only singly out Valery because He was operating right below me but he missed a crossfield pass and very quickly afterwards failed to get back to cover his man which resulted in a corner to them. He did much the same thing against Cardiff which led to their first goal. There was a noticeable difference between our players and some of the Fulham midfield at this time too but fortunately they were not very effective. I'm surprised that we did not use an extra two substitutes both to slow down the game and to bring on frsh legs.

Me neither. There again I was watching the match and not the crowd.

I was going by the usual lists of ‘World’s most dangerous airports but I value your opinion much more highly than those. It looked to me like a severe case of over-correction.

'Relatively calm skies'? Gibraltar is notorious for having difficult winds and is considered by some to be the most dangerous airport in Europe. Something to do with the wind coming down off The Rock.

Nah, I don’t agree. Stephens is not one accident waiting to happen, he’s a hatful of them. For the first goal he sloppily lost possession and instead of belting back as fast as his legs could carry him he lopes back at half pace, may have given a penalty away and is a spectator for Lacazette’s goal. For the second he panicked and dithered and gave Gunn an awful pass to deal with. This is the same Stephens who gave away a penalty at Burnley and under no pressure at all passed the ball straight to a Cardiff player deep into injury time. He’s just not good enough.

He has li-ability

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How much wider? I would prefer him sitting in the coach in the car park. Won’t head the ball, can’t pass reliably, doesn’t mark anybody and stick to them. Why does anybody pick him to play?