benjii

I think the problem is Chez, you rave about him after every match when he is patently quite average fairly often. He may well have been wonderful against MK Dons but I don't believe you.

I take the point about pikcing up suspensions but that's little help to the team that has been subject to a deliberate foul in the match in question. Obviously they might be lucky enough to be benefitting from the suspension of another player, or they may not. The sanctions system in football is silly. You can accidentally foul someone moving away from goal 17 yards out and at an obscure angle and it costs you a goal. If you do what Mascherano did yesterday and deliberately foul someone, recognising that they are in a dangerous position it costs you a yellow card and a free-kick (unless the ref gets it wrong and gives a penalty). What I would like to see, is a situation where deliberate, cheating fouls outside the box are either punished with some sort of goal scoring chance (a free shot from 18 yards perhaps?) or tougher sanctions on the player committing the foul. The problem football has with that sort of system is that it requires greater discretionary decision making from referees (they have to interpret the foul rather than just award whatever free-kick is prescribed): couple this with the shocking lack of respect exhibited by most players and managers and the televisual microscope and it's difficult to introduce. I would get around this by also introducing video replay facilities so that the ref gets more decisions correct.

Exactly - that was the real cheating. Most sports have greater sanctions for that kind of foul. It is completely deliberate and is seeking to gain an advantage. A different category of foul from simply being a bit late with a tackle or being over physical in a header etc.. Those sorts of fouls should attract a sin-binning like in rugby and hockey. They are inherently dishonest and deserve greater punishment than a free-kick and a yellow card.

A much more interesting question would be: should defenders be allowed to commit cynical and deliberate fouls on players about to enter the penalty area, knowing full well that the only sanction will be a yellow-card? Good for Fonte, good for Valencia.

I love the well-reasoned and compelling argument put there. Not bad for an 8 year old.

Wrong sort of forum to explain that.

Will I be ok?

I think it's a great idea but only if it looks professional and cool. After all, the bar's been set pretty high on this sort of thing

To hear how amazing Schneiderlin is?

Exactly. It's what professional footballers do. It always makes me laugh when people apply Sunday league refereeing norms to our matches. In the type of football most of us play you need to be assaulted before you get a free-kick. In professional football if there is contact and you go down you will get a free-kick 90% of the time. If Fonte felt some contact and won us a pen then good for him. Hope he does it a lot.

It is certainly an interesting line of thought. I posted something on here about Zhahavi and Al-Faraj a few million posts ago. Football is basically just full of complete ****s.

I've got two pairs of them. I use one for five-a-side and one for working in muddy fields.

'tis ever thus with football television. Gravy train for dinlos.

First bet on this year's Festival today... £5 each way on Sanctuaire at 7/1 (SP 4/1). Happy days! Might have a cheeky flutter tomorrow lunchtime when I collect my winnings. Nothing serious though. Will be there on Friday... hope the weather holds off!

The last 25 matches? We average awhisker under 2 points per match apparently. Now go and have a look at the league table. Anyone who thinks we would struggle to make the play-offs next season with the current squad is seriously lacking in fortitude and bottle IMO.

We don't need to. We have Championship winning form over the last 25 matches (since the current team minus Puncheon, Barnard, Fonte and Seabourne) bedded in. Maintain the status quo and the OP is right.

Chris Marsden went there on a Wednesday once. Fact.

Well, obviously we had some pre-season matches so we had a chance to get fit. What we didn't have at that point though was anything resembling a coherent top-of-League One level support structure. We had no scouting. We had a skeleton staff. Evidently, we have achieved a step-change since the first ten or so games. Whatever the reason, it is clear that something that needed to happen happened and took some time to do. It doesn't really matter what it was. What is clear is that we are now one of the top teams in the division. If we continue our current form until the end of the season then we will have shown Championship winning form for arounf three-quarters of it. That is good.

Great description. He was one of my least favourite referees. Didn't appear to have any idea of a player's thought processes or understanding of what was going on in some situations. Gave some terrible performances when refereeing us.

Exactly. It really shouldn't require explanation but you have done it well!

This just shows that the people who were saying "there's no reason to expect us to get promoted next season" a couple of weeks ago are as clueless as I said they were. Averaging two points per game over 20+ games is something only a few teams ever achieve. If this squad is kept together (largely) and the manager is retained we will go up next season (if we don't this) and it will be an amazing laugh.

Ahh, I see it is.

Is it that guy who grins inanely all the time? So annoying.

Lol at the Storrie stuff today. Points deductions me up!

I emailed the address given on the "Referees" page of the FA website. If enough of us complain they will have to look at this - assuming the assessor hasn't already done the biz.