Whitey Grandad

Be careful not to spoil your paper.

Yes, many times. I usually keep my eyes closed. ?

Thanks for that, it seems I wasn't far out. One of the reasons for the change in Sweden was that a large number of their cars were imports with left-hand drive. In the 1960s Japan did not have a large car export business but because they drove on the left they could export to Britain without large investment. This helped start the growth in car manufacture in Japan.

One of you might be wearing a wig.

Amen

That's not the way it works. We vote for the representatives and they get on with it until the next time.

Fonte (?) got the ball, didn't he? And watch Agüero throw his head back at the moment the tackle comes in.

They're both despicable. The ones I feel some sympathy for are those which are just trying to get out of the way yet still get booked. The body language tells you a lot, some of them are looking back at the referee before they even hit the ground. Some throw their heads back and give out a little yelp. Pathetic.

If it was a clear penalty it would have been given. We just have to remember that the referee is neutral and probably won't see the incidents in the same light that we do.

Maybe we should have a Conservative - Labour coalition. That should please everybody.

No, it's not like that. If a player has to take avoiding action, not necessarily to avoid injury but in an attempt to avoid a challenge and get a shot off on goal, then that can be considered a foul. The divers will hang out a leg and engineer contact in order to try to make the perceived offence more definite. You can always tell a diver by looking at the leg that has not made contact with the opposition. In normal play this would be taking the next step in a natural sequence but a diver will drag this unused leg behind and conseqeuntly there will be a dive instead of a stumble. Hazard did this on Sunday but there was also a push just before this which would be enough for a penalty. He was definitely looking for the penalty and a defender obliged. The challenge can still be a foul even if the attacker dives or somehow exaggerates the fall. A lot of referees I knew would expect the attacker to make some sort of attempt to avoid the challenge and only if they were brought down or prevented from continuing or getting off a shot would they then award a penalty. There does not have to be contact for it to be a foul. Contact does not necessarily make it a foul. To answer your last question, they make contact because they want to force the referee to make a decision. You can often tell that they have done this deliberately when you see them beating the ground in frustration. They practice it all the time. My dad used to watch Tottenham train in the 60s and one of the coaches used to sit on a stool with his back to goal and do training sessions with the forwards saying 'make him foul you, go on, make him foul you'. Some modern forwards are very good at it, so good that nobody ever questions the results. Christiano Ronaldo for example has very quick feet and will look for the defender to place his foot down and then 'trip' over it. The essential question is 'was he tripped or did he trip'.

If an attacker has to take avoiding action that leads to him losing control of the ball then that can be a foul. Contact has no place in the laws of the game. Intent has to be determined by the referee and this judgment is based on a number of factors, speed and movement of the players, expressions on their faces, where their eyes are looking, anything that has been said, these are all very subtle and are unlikely to have been picked up by TV. Slow-motion is no help because it disguises the momentum of the player, you need to judge in real time whether his change in movement is caused by an external influence or is self-inflicted.

Very difficult to judge on TV. The best position is to stand on the line, level with the second to last defender and look across the pitch at right angles. The TV view is never going to be as accurate as this. There are of course the blatant mistakes but that just means we need better officials. I haven't seen any of these this season. What does contact have to do with it? It has absolutely no bearing as to whether there was a foul. 'Trip or attempt to trip' is the wording which implies intent and you cannot judge that on TV.

I disagree. What they call errors on MOTD are just their opinions which happen to be different from those of the referees. They have to fill their airtime with something so they try to manufacture some sort of controversy or debate. These opinions that they offer are very often wrong.

Only a one game ban for denying a goal scoring opportunity.

If it's not a penalty then you can't give a goal kick, that would be unfair to the attackers. You would have to restart the game at the place where play was stopped. Technically it should be a dropped ball. This would never work in practice and what us the point if it all? It would ruin the game.

He's there to manage substitutions and the two benches. He may also play a role in disciplinary matters, but plays no other role in officiating the game. Before there was a 4th official the senior linesman would take over but then he would need to be replaced. There was one televised match where Jimmy Hill ran the line as he was a qualified referee at the time.

I didn't like JWP getting a red because it leaves us short of a player for another game, but by no means was the decision obviously incorrect. My point in the last sentence was that often we may not like a decision and hoping for a judicial review is just a refusal to accept the outcome.

I didn't say that private healthcare was necessarily better, just saying that improved patient welfare is the ultimate aim however it is achieved. It would be wrong to let politics get in the way of that.

Apart from 1. where we are talking about some remote group reviewing the decision. I didn't say that you had suggested the others, just pointing out the logical extension of the argument. What the proponents of video reviews are basically saying is that they don't like the decision and they want somebody else to look at it.

So, you are saying that better patient care is less important than how it is achieved? Are you saying that all that matters is that the public sector should be as large as possible no matter the consequences?

Nice idea but ask me again after next weekend. To be still in the 'race' for Champions League with three games to go is unheard of in this household.

No, no and thrice no. What do you want, a committee to decide on every decision? Why not go the whole hog and have a telephone vote or something on Twitter? These pundits have to fill the airtime with something and penalty decisions are an easy target. If you're going to examine penalties and offsides then you also have to examine every other decision in the same game.

Or serious foul play or offensive, abusive or insulting language. I thought a red was harsh but not totally unjustified.

What a stupid prejudiced comment.