Lighthouse

I think he tried to overcompensate for our poor defence by flooding it at the start of the season and it just didn't work. They seemed to play with an attitude of, "there's five of us, that man/ball must be someone else's problem." Goals going in left, right and centre whilst the defenders throw their arms up and stare at each other. Fair play for Ralph having the balls to go back to two CB and say, "Right, Jan, Jack - I'm choosing you, step forward and take responsibility." It has the added bonus of allowing us to play another forward.

Don't know if it's been said already but hasn't the away team won the last 4 times we've played each other? Bit of a quirky stat.

I'll be honest, I hadn't even noticed they had so few points. Was thinking they were on about 18/19 but yeah, they're gone with 14. A draw in tomorrow's early game and City giving Villa an absolute rogering would round the weekend off nicely.

Deserves its own chant IMO. "I love VAR! You scored another goal but it's offside baby!"

I'll take a few more weeks of Burnley and Norwich losing before I start getting too bullish about Europe. Form is temporary. It was temporary when we lost 5 out of 6 home games and it is now we're beating 3 out of the top 5 teams. If we beat Wolves and get above 30 points in January, I'll believe we're pretty much safe.

Might get VAR 1 on the back of my shirt. My favourite player since Pahars.

Everything else going our way too. Arsenal and Palace draw Burnley hammered Brighton lose Wolves and Newcastle draw Norwich hammered Closer to 5th than the relegation zone now, 8 points above 18th.

Get! The! F**k! In!

Well, we lasted two minutes longer than last time.

We absolutely, definitely will not get an absolute hammering.

I'd say the first Gulf War and liberating Kuwait was relatively successful. On a separate issue, I'd say the shoot down has shown the good social media CAN do in this world. As much as I loathe it some times for the crap that gets posted, I doubt Iran would have admitted guilty quite so readily without all the photos and videos which leaked onto twitter.

First instance - Supposing it was a cross and there was another striker waiting in the middle but the deflection off the hand takes it away from him. Second instance - It's not the same offence for penalties either. There's a huge difference between accidentally scoring a goal via a handball and accidentally denying a scoring opportunity. That's what the rule is about - making sure no goal is scored from an accidental handball, either for or against, which is fair.

Vardy blasts the ball at Stephens from a yard away and it flicks off his hand accidentally - Penalty, in your opinion? Vardy trips Stephens when we're defending - Free kick and no card Stephens trips Vardy when through on goal - Free kick and a straight red Is that not a different rule for the same foul?

Yes, it's applied equally to both teams.

The offside law isn’t consistent for all situations. It changes for a goal kick or a throw in because it suits the game better. Red cards are different too. If you trip a player in the oppositions penalty box it’s just a free kick to them, if you commit the same foul when a player is through on goal it’s a straight red. Supposing McC pulls off an absolute worldy save tomorrow in injury time when it’s 0-0. Vardy is stood a yard away and the ball rebounds off his hand and back into the net. Completely accidental, so the goal should stand, correct?

It’s not ridiculous, it means you can’t score from any handball and you can’t concede a penalty from an accidental handball. Makes prefect sense to me, I don’t see the problem. Do you think it’s right that Henry scored against Ireland?

In the grand scheme of things I’d like the Blades to help send the Hammers down and get revenge for 2007 or whenever it was. That said, Utd are catchable to a bore draw is fine.

Then it is quite obviously offside, by around 10cm and should be given as such immediately.

Without wanting to go into Corbyn on another thread, I generally agree. It's almost impossible not to be a hypocrite in some capacity. If I set up some local recycling scheme, I'm sure I'd have people pointing out that I used to drive a gas-guzzling car with a 3.5L engine, or the flights I took last year just to go and have a few beers with friends in France. Doesn't mean I shouldn't try to do what I can.

I've got a 2 bed apartment on the market in Crawley, so it's good to know there are a couple more potential buyers out there.

I guess we just disagree on that fundamentally, I haven’t seen anything to suggest fans were satisfied that we’d tried and failed to sign players. I don’t see any way in which it could be said that worked, if it was a tactic to placate fans. Almost all the opinion I can remember, both at the time and since then, has been overwhelmingly negative. We’ve nearly been relegated, Reed lost his job and everyone was glad to see him gone. Fans are p*ssed off, I’ve not seen one person saying they wish he’d stayed because he nearly signed Promes.

How does it illustrate that? The replies on this thread just show badly all these failed transfer windows have been for PR. Nobody has been placated, if this is a PR tactic then it has bombed spectacularly.

That’s the thing though, I don’t. I believe Reed to be incompetent for failing to recruit any decent players in recent years. We needed quality player in summer and we’ve had several games this season where none of our signings made the match day 18. Okay, Djenepo was injured but still... it’s nowhere near good enough and whoever said what to the press didn’t make any difference. It’s all a moot point. I don’t believe any rumour until I see them holding a sh*t, overpriced shirt outside a decent, overpriced training ground.

That’s all fair enough, I’m not doubting that the club leak info to the press. Stuff like telling the fans we’re going to sign players and change the coaches after the 0-9 is sensible PR mitigation. I’m just not sure why they would want to look like they were consistently failing to sign good players.

I’ll assume you mean that if we’re told we tried to sign a great player and failed, we will all just sit here happy that we tried to be ambitious. Now, I can sort of see the logic in that but how many people do you think are actually stupid enough to fall for it? When Les left, there was a poll and 95% of people were glad to see the back of him. He was judged in what he did and what he failed to do, both by the fans and rest of the boardroom. Not by rumours of superstar signings in the Telegraph. To put an analogy on it, it’s like leaving some Barbados holiday brochures lying around the house, some fake, business class Virgin Atlantic tickets in strategic places around the house and asking the wife to buy 4 bottles of factor 30. Then book a static caravan weekend in Ilfracombe and tell the family there was a booking error and the Caribbean trip got cancelled. I don’t think they’d be impressed and would probably stop believing you if you did it twice a year. Sorry I know I’ve gone a bit off topic but there’s little else to discus on this thread ATM.