Saint Martini

I don't believe for one second that these losses are caused by international breaks. I do agree that some of the international breaks have come at times when we were just "on a roll" but there's not actual connection between the international break and us playing badly. If anything its an advantage. We're playing Chelsea and all of their players will play international matches whereas we will only have a few away. That gives us time to train and prepare with at least the majority of the squad. Until today we hadn't won with Schneiderlin scoring, sometimes these events might seem to be connected to each other but in reality they're unrelated. Lets just wait and see how we do against Chelsea. I'm looking forward to the match, Chelsea haven't exactly been great since our draw with them.

Same questions were asked about Rodriguez earlier this season. Some signings take a while to settle. Mayuka came from the Swiss league, that's a big step up and Forren from the Norwegian which is perhaps an even bigger step up. Give it time, you can't judge a signing of a young player after a few months.

Glad to see someone not totally overreacting. We played good football for most of the game but were sloppy with the final ball. That combined with Yoshidas worst match in a Saints shirt caused the loss (this doesn't make him a waste of space or the worst player ever to come from Japan). I agree Fox isn't good enough but with Shaw not fit perhaps it was not worth the risk (I can't make that judgement).

I'm not arguing referees don't make mistakes. Absolutely not. But according to the laws of the game that should not be a penalty. And you are entirely correct, a non-deliberate handball is never a foul and shouldn't be a freekick or penalty. My suggestion is that it is too difficult for a referee to make a determination on intent (unless it is very obvious, i.e. Suarez vs. Ghana). I'm of the opinion that any handball should be punished with a freekick/penalty but only in case of deliberate handball should a card be given (in most cases yelllow, red in case its too stop an obvious goal chance). If we apply that to the Michael Svensson incident he would not have gotten a card (non-intentional) but would have gotten a penalty against him, which is fair in my opinion.

Now explain to me why it would be a red card if it wasn't deliberate.

That would be a penalty and a yellow. Red cards are only given for a deliberate handball that denies a goal or a obvious scoring opportunity.

There's one solution, give a penalty/freekick for every time the ball touches a hand. No exceptions, I don't get why you wouldn't give a penalty in for instance Fox' case. He stops the ball from going towards the goal, he thus has an advantage from the ball touching a part of his body it shouldn't. What argument could you have for not giving a penalty? Would the same apply if you block the ball on the line? Just imagine the Ghana - Uruguay match in the 2010 WC. Suarez stops the ball with his hand but imagine his hand is in a natural position. How can you explain that it isn't a penalty? Rather unfair on the other team isn't it?

QPR so that's 3 points in the bag by your logic.

In retrospect bringing on Fox for Shaw was not the best decision ever....

None of the three decisions was very obvious but in the end Clyne should have gotten a freekick, Shaw should have gotten a freekick and Cisse was offside. Three chances to take the correct decision, three mistakes. That said, Newcastle deserve their lead. Apart from the first 5 minutes they owned us. We've had about 35% of the possession, almost no chances and have been forced to play the longball quite a bit. Changes are needed but to be honest I don't really see which ones. First of all we should be closing down Cabaye a lot quicker but isn't that why we have Davis on the pitch instead of Ramirez? It all starts with work ethic and it isn't there today. We're not really pressing, we're walking up to our opponent and then waiting about two yards from them. Not good enough.

Which can also be a description for Dutch people that isn't totally off the mark. Perhaps the Dutch heritage in SA i part of it.

Not that surprising considering our playing philosophy is rather similar to the way would like Liverpool to play. If he only costs 4.5 million this would be an awesome signing even though he might be a bit too old for our transferpolicy.

He played 85 mins against Man Utd so him not having played much is a bit of a non-argument. Anyway, he did okay yesterday but he was at fault for their goal. Not because the set-play didn't work but because he didn't take up his regular position when he got back thus leaving our left flank wide open for Man City to attack. We had numbers back, more then enough. When Dzeko got the ball he was 1 against 4 and he had to hold up play. If Fox tracks the run on his side that goal probably doesn't happen (at least not as easily). Lets put it like this, his defensive instincts aren't the best. He didn't know what to do when he got back so he drifts inside, awful decision since we already had several players there.

No it wasn't. It was a textbook booking.

I thought he occasionally had played LB in Norway?

If we take away the penalty decision and the 5 minutes of extra time he invented he had an ok match. He let the game flow and in general didn't start waving cards for no reason. But you're judged on the big decisions so a 5/10.

But when you have your second choice LB leaving the game injured I'd say he should get a chance to show what he can do. Now we had to make two changes (Clyne to LB and Richardson to RB) and for me one change is better because it is less likely to disrupt the team. I also thought getting an extra CB on the pitch to deal with crosses into the box the last few minutes would have been a good idea. Ah well. We won. But if I have to guess why he hasn't played yet it is because of our playing style. Not exactely the most common in Norway and it might take some time to adjust to the tempo and playing so far up the pitch. Give it time, especially since there isn't really a spot open in the team.

He had a great game today and was my MOTM but he has one problem that becomes a rather big one with our playing style and it is his lack of speed the first few yards. On the other hand, he managed to out-sprint Aguero today....

Great performance, the last 10 minutes were just inspirational. We kept passing the ball and we frustrated the hell out of City. My MOTM goes to Hooiveld, I thought he was brilliant today. He was in the way of shots and apart from the goal which he cannot be faulted for he kept Aguero and Dzeko quiet together with Yosh. Plus he had several brilliant balls over the top that could easily have been converted to goals.Impressive performance from him, I didn't think he could do it in the PL but he proved me wrong (something he has been doing his whole career).

Some players will want to jump ship but they have valid contracts and considering these players just got relegated I can imagine that there won't be that much interest for all players, but certainly for some. The relegated club can get a decent value for the players because they can afford to keep them.

Even though I agree with the argument that minutes silence/minutes applause, black armbands to mark the death of people are overused I don't think there's an argument that this minutes silence was warranted. The tragedy in that nightclub can easily be described as a national drama in Brazil so how is it weird to have a minutes silence when their most important national team plays a match in the following week. The fact that the fire at that nightclub might not have gotten as much attention in the British press doesn't mean this is a significant event in Brazil. Imagine the Brazil FA not granting a minutes silence after the London bombings in 2005 (only 56 deaths, that's not that much is....) because it doesn't have anything to do with football. That would go down well. For me the criteria are quite simple. * National/local tragedies that affect a community/nation warrant a minutes silence * If a person with a strong connection to the club/nation pass away the club/nation can decide to have their way of marking this (minutes silence, blackarmbands, etc.) depending on the importance of said person to the club/nation and perhaps also how/when they passed away. * If someone connected to another club passes away, or someone granny, mother, kid, etc. passes away this is probably a private matter that doesn't have to be marked in the public sphere.

You can't implement the rule for current contracts but what is to stop the PL from make it illegal to hand out contracts that don't have that clause? The player has the choice to either accept the clause or choose to sign somewhere else.

I noticed the same thing in the last few matches that even when we don't have the ball one of Cork and Schneiderlin pushes up to disrupt the build-up of the opposition and perhaps start a counter. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens as a result. It can lead to more goals being scored on both in both our and the opposition goal.

http://www.sportpulse.net/content/two-premier-league-sides-chasing-dutch-star-6665 Reported here as well, nothing in the Dutch press so far.

No no, Mayuka came from the feeder team.