Lighthouse

He can’t be worth £50m, a year ago he was being kept out of the team by Daryl Janmaat.

I used to have a Screwfix catalogue, which made do in an emergency but these days it’s been replaced by an app, which I find less effective.

You’re probably thinking of Iago Falque, or ‘Flakey’ as I called him. Played in a home defeat to Leicester when we got promoted.

Alright, calm down. You’re talking about two people and they aren’t idiots, it’s just an opinion.

I had to go and find the highlights to see what all the fuss was about because I just can’t bring myself to watch it. It’s awful, the goalkeepers especially are like watching a jellyfish trying to catch a cannonball.

We are talking about the same incident right? 1:10 It's an absolute stone waller. The rules of the game haven't changed, there just wont be any getting away with incidents which should have been. At the risk of incurring the feminist wrath, I'm going to suggest the standard of football and officiating is far higher in the Premier League than the women's WC. As such we will see fewer incidents like this taking forever to sort out. VAR worked pretty well last year in the men's WC, I think after a few games it will probably be alright.

What do you mean, "this"? It has absolutely nothing do do with Adams. "This," isn't anything, other than proof that Shane Long failed to make the same impression in the Premier League. Austin and Ings were both capable of 15 in this league without their fitness issues.

It was quite blatantly a penalty.

VAR right now is like a new signing, it's going to take a few games of patience before we start expecting too much. If there was a system which we could implement straight away, which worked faultlessly 100% of the time, it would have been done years ago. We don't but this is better than nothing.

Say what you like; if Saints were Argentina, Scotland were Man Utd and there was no VAR, you would all be fuming that penalty wasn’t given. It needs to streamlined but that was the right decision, as was the retake.

It's the Mail. I'll believe it when I see it.

Done and stuck.

The latter two, when fit, were capable of 15 league goals in a season. I'm not aware of Adams having any injury concerns. He could be the next Lambert or the next Vydra, I guess we will (probably) find out in 11 months.

I’m sure Brum had nothing to do with that.

To further expand on the analogy, it's more like penalising someone for doing 31 in a 30 outside a school or busy pedestrian area, but ignoring someone doing 40 in a 30 on some disused industrial estate. VAR wont be perfect, far from it, but it will make the game better IMO. Give it a few games, diving and shirt pulling will be almost dead.

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Yep, should have been retaken again. Everyone does it because it never gets punished. VAR is like putting a speed camera on a 30 road where everyone normally does 45 because they just do. The first couple of days will be speeding tickets galore; after that everyone soon learns. That's what the start of the season will be like, if you're still giving away 5 penalties a games after that then more fool you.

If nothing else we can re-use Charlie Austin’s monogrammed shorts.

Hope this weather doesn’t make it to Manchester before we bowl them out.

Are you saying there is something dodgy about awarding the World Cup to a country with 2.6 million people, massive amounts of disposable income, no footballing heritage, no stadiums, where it's too hot to go for a walk in June, let alone play elite level football?

Never thought we’d have a nail biting last ball.

The bit in bold is where I disagree with quite a few people. You're right but what you're basically saying is that they are being trained to cheat in order to gain an advantage. Until now they've largely gotten away with it. It has always been the rule, so it's hardly as if players are going to be caught by surprise. The difference is now it's going to be enforced and the onus is on coaches to make sure their 'keepers are compliant in preseason. The French player could well argue that the Nigerian 'keeper put her off by stepping forward and covering more of the goal. She then missed the target trying to get the ball into a gap which wasn't there. The Nigerian keeper will argue she just missed the target and it's just tit for tat. All you can say for certain is the 'keeper broke the rule, so IMO the kick should be retaken if it's not scored.

Apart from verbally abusing two managers and punching Erik Lamela?

I don't see a problem with any of that personally. Supposing we change those faces around a bit. Saints are France, Liverpool are Nigeria, that's at the Kop End and the defender sent off is Lovren. With no VAR that penalty isn't given and Lovren isn't sent off. Two minutes later, he goes up the other end and scores the winner from a corner and Saints lose 1-0. We'd all be absolutely fuming that we were robbed of a game we should have won but the officials bottled it at Anfield again. As for the retake, that seems fair enough to me too. I think some of you are falling for the puppy dog eyes, 'what have I done!?' face, players always seem to pull in these situations. She knew exactly what she was doing, she shuffled forward a good foot off her line before the kick was taken. It's not as if the 'keeper didn't know this rule. I'm all in favour of VAR officials coming down hard early on. Maybe we will see games with eight penalties given for shirt pulling; so what? The players will soon learn to stop and the game will be all the better for it.

This isn’t worth arguing over. To put it literally; Iran might want a nuclear weapon and I can understand why. However, I don’t think letting them develop one would be a sensible idea. I honestly don’t get the willingness of some people to think all countries are the same and should be treated equally. The "if America can have nukes, why can’t Iran and North Korea?" Mentality.