Whitey Grandad

Quite so. For every thumping profit made on a VVD or a Mané there are plenty of losers to offset against it.

Wasn't there something about this around the time that we played Midtjylland away?

Have they won anything yet? Just checkin'

Well said sir. It is a duty/responsibility of the refereee to keep the game flowing by appropriate use of ‘advantage’.

Have we forgotten Dani Osvaldo? Easily overlooked.

Yes... but... If Mané and Van Dijk and the others hadn’t left then that could have been us celebrating at St Mary’s.

They never turned up.

Well that was a waste of an evening:(

Sh1t

BT Sport is just as bad.

Yes... but... If Barca get one in injury time...

I can’t stand this screaming commentary. Does me ‘ead in. Where can I get an unbiased one? Come on Barcelona!

Indeed it was, well remembered. That was the season of Hillsborough and this match was postponed until after the Cup Final. All the other games had been completed a week before that (I had to look this up) I suppose the point is still valid. I prefer the teams contesting the top of the table to be playing off against each other.

That's a total disgrace. It also means that we won't see any single matches such as the one in 1988-1989 when Michael Thomas scored for Arsenal at Anfield to clinch the title. From Wikipedia: "The match is considered to be one of the most dramatic conclusions to a league season in the history of the English game. It is also regarded as the starting point of a renaissance in English football; the ban on English clubs playing in European football was lifted a year later and a new top-flight division – the Premier League, was formed in 1992 which generated more revenue for clubs. The title decider also formed the centrepiece of Nick Hornby's book Fever Pitch."

You're right that referees are influenced by big crowds and big name players. I think this is one reason why we see fairer refereeing when there is a European match with a continental referee. I also think it's wrong to appoint Premier League referees to a cup game involving a lower division club. I don't like to see a referee on first-name terms with a player and especially not using friendly nicknames.

True, but he devil is in the detail. If one club signs up a lot of free transfers which then allows them to spend more on wages that will distort the figures. Or if one club, let's call it Southampton, spends a load of money on signing inadequate players which it then loans out won't that also affect the table?

Net spend is meaningless. There are too many other factors involved, salaries, signing on fees, golden goodbyes.

...

It was the assistant that gave the foul, not the referee. A referee will very, very rarely overrule his assistant. It wasn’t even a tackle. There was a little bit of hands flapping by both players. I don’t know what the assistant thought he saw but it wasn’t a foul.

Priceless! I love the pictures.

Nothing less than a public enquiry, surely.

No, I wasn’t at the game of course. For what it’s worth I thought that Gunn might have done better with the shot that he parried for Bournemouth’s second goal but that hasn’t been mentioned.

If Carlsberg did football results...

I can’t decide either. I don’t know what the assistant thought he saw but it wasn’t a foul. It doesn’t have to be deliberate. Sometimes they get so caught up in the action that they see things that aren’t there. One incident that I thought was very suspect and that still bugs me was at Old Trafford on 10th May 1995. It was a midweek game and the season was ending on the following Sunday. For some reason my wife had come with us but was sitting in a seat some way away. We were drawing 1-1 at halftime and I said to my wife that if we were still drawing at 80 minutes then the first time that they got into our penalty area they would get a penalty. Sure enough someone has a slight tug on Andy Cole’s sleeve and the referee Paul Danton pounces on it like a cat pounces on a mouse. He couldn’t give it quick enough. The title race went to the last Sunday and Blackburn ended up winners. Sky sold a lot of satellite dishes in that last week.

A very sensible post. To be honest, from what I saw on MOTD I didn’t think he looked too bad.