Whitey Grandad

Well said. Like it or not these referees are the best that we have. Anyone who has not tried to referee a game at any level is unlikely to appreciate the total concentration that is required and sometimes the brain can get overloaded, especially if the players don't help and start acting up.

Ah but how long until the next one?

Twitter the year might be Lee Mason Reason has prevailed

Why not go further and open it up to a telephone vote? Twitter, even, except that they wouldn't make any money out of that.

This was discussed in the press many years ago. The premiums were so high that many clubs didn't bother, they just covered the risks themselves.

Why? The whole point of a professional club is to provide entertainment for a paying public. I don't believe that this entertainment shold be provided solely throgh the electronic media. A far better suggestion is to cut out the league stages of the Champions League.

I have to pick you up here on your use of QED.

Where I come from 'think tank' is rhyming slang for something.

And so it should.

Die

If selected

Benteke's was given by the assistant, to be fair to the ref. I think our claim was better that his but different ref, different day. (Nice use/non-use of the apostrophe by the way )

We've always like the idea of a Joker that you could play once in a season before any game. Any points from that game are doubled.

Oscilloscope

As my business partner said as he was dying from lung cancer, "something's going to get you in the end".

Tadic should have had a yellow card for all that faffing about.

Hmm... I thought they had to live at least 125 miles away. Mind you, that was a long time ago.

Or look at Tadic. His reaction is also significant. I would up the decision at 70/30 in favour of a penalty. Tadic makes sure that his left leg gets caught but there's enough of a wallop there to give it as a foul, in my opinion.

Pay their bills? Do I detect a hint of irony in their somewhere?

Old man dies aged 70, It happens to us all in the end.

Please see my comments on the match thread. The penalty was not quite as stonewall as some make out but the red card was for something that never happened.

Here's my view for what it's worth. I can see why the penalty wasn't given. Tadic does rather hang his leg out there to make sure that he gets caught and his fall is somewhat theatrical. Having said that nobody could complain or be surprised if it had been given. In principle there's not a lot of difference between this incident and the one on Benteke. The red card was simply ridiculous. I don't know what the ref thought he saw.

On Sky Sports now as full extended highlights. No need even for the red button

Small populations with enormous natural resources distort the comparisons. In Switzerland's case not being bankrupted by wars helped a lot.

I'm with you on all of this but the solution is to reduce the size of the population.