Sheaf Saint

So you wouldn't have celebrated any goal that might have come from that then? You would have just complained that he was offside? Wow.

The offside wasn't given so had we scored it would have counted. Would you still be criticising him?

Newcastle fans getting all uppity about offside decisions, conveniently forgetting one of their goals against us last season was a blatant offside not given.

Yeah I reckon so...

FFS Gazza! What the f**k was that!?

End to end stuff now.

Fookin fantastic goal!!!!!!!!

Yep. The possession stats show us as having 67%, but Newcastle move the ball forwards so much more quickly than us and that is the difference. No point having 67% possession if all you are going to do is keep passing back to the keeper and then launching hopeful balls forward.

Osvaldo had two players free on the edge of the box there. If he could have just laid it off first time we would have been in but instead he tries to dance through the defence himself and loses out.

If Fonte is fit enough to be on the bench then he is fit enough to be on the pitch. Get him on Mauricio.

Poo. Once again our backup players let us down. Hooiveld and Gazza between them should have dealt with that. Gonna be a long afternoon now.

Is Cork playing at RB with Chambers in midfield?

Lovely ball in from Chambers there.

Gazza far too slow off his line there. Lucky let-off.

Oh no! Scientists have put air temperature gauges in urban areas! The entire foundations of climate science must be false!!!! George you are such a muppet I don't know why I bother engaging you, but stupidity like yours needs to be challenged. The accounting and adjusting for the urban heat island effect is taught to 1st year students. Jesus, even I learned about it in an Open University taster course that's lower even than level one. Do you honestly think that the world's climate science community has completely overlooked it?

Yep, can't disagree. Thanks very much for the memories F1 but it's time we moved on I'm afraid. The double points thing is just the worst kind of stupidity imaginable. Imagine a driver just edging out his rivals (not blowing them away as Vettel has done for the last couple of years) over an entire season and going into the last race with a modest but healthy lead and then losing out because of the double points. Bernie you are a tool for agreeing to this.

I don't know. We weren't at our best up there last year, but I would say that a dodgy penalty decision and an goal that blatantly should have been ruled offside were the actual difference between the teams.

Good question. My understanding is that you are correct regarding decimal places or significant figures. In science whenever you write an equation you should always present your answer to the same significant figures as the value with the lowest in the calculation. I just did a quick search for something where I could find some raw data and came across this (I know the observatory at Mauna Loa records air temperatures because that's where the monitoring of CO2 concentration began) and it looks as though they are indeed using 3 decimal places... http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/6/1685/2010/cpd-6-1685-2010.pdf

Oh for the love of god George, are you still desperately clinging on to that 'climategate' bullsh*t? I realise that nothing I or anybody else can post will ever make you realise how wrong you are about climate science, but do you seriously not realise how much of a tool you look by carrying on using that as 'evidence' to support your argument?

I wondered whose turn it was to have a scapegoat thread started about him immediately after the game tonight.

Been out and only got back for the last 5 minutes. Seems as though we actually played pretty well and deserved to win but got mugged. It's football - that happens. Anybody remember away at Villa last season when we won thanks to a dodgy penalty? What about the Leeds game in our Championship season?

If that's the case then I can see Cork leaving in January to get the first team football he should be playing, seeing as he isn't even first choice backup in his position.

Much like us, Villa's defending is much improved this season. They were abysmal at the back in that game last season. Can't see Gaston having as much of an effect against them this time around.

Now we are a third of the way through the season, how do people view our progress? My take on it so far... We've played 13 games now, four of which have been away at Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea, and we're sitting 7th above both Man Utd and Spurs. I doubt anybody (excepting, perhaps, Cortese himself) had any higher expectations than that at the start of the season. Despite the two consecutive defeats, we still have the joint best defensive record in the PL. Up until yesterday we have pretty much held our own against every team we have played, but the manner of the defeat at Chelsea shows we still have a long way to go before we can seriously challenge the top four. Moving forward... The loss of Boruc will be a blow, as we all know neither of our back up keepers are really up to it at this level. Too often we look toothless up front and that's something that might need to be addressed in January, because so far both of our very expensive international attacking players have failed to deliver the goods. My gut feeling is that we will finish somewhere around where we are now. If we continue performing as we have then anything below 8th/9th come May will be a disappointment.

Very frustrating day, but Chelsea were simply much better than us. No disgrace really because there is a very good reason they have the home record they do. I too am getting very concerned about our seeming inability to create decent openings up front. I have very much defended Osvaldo so far but he was totally anonymous today. True he didn't get any decent service, but when that's not happening you need a striker that can create chances for himself, and the only player we have that looks capabale of that currently is J-Rod. Wanyama didn't have one of his better games today, and when that happens we look a lot less assured in midfield and at the back. Needed a big game from him today to counter the threat of Ramires and Mata, but he was too casual at times, as he has an infuriating tendency to be. Oh well. Draw a blue line under it and move on. It's disappointing to have dropped but with two consecutive away games against teams that will undoubtedly be in the CL places at the end of the season it was always going to be a mammoth task to keep our momentum going.