Football The 2020/2021 Season Thread

[caLLous]

Today was a good day. I thoroughly enjoyed our hour or so at the top of the table.

 

[caLLous]

 

[caLLous]

Christ, Liverpool are having some luck with defensive injuries. This sounds like a bad one as well.

Gomez to have scans on knee injury

Liverpool defender Joe Gomez is to have further tests on a knee injury suffered during training with England.

www.bbc.com

 

[Embattle]

I hate international breaks with pointless money making league games.

 

[caLLous]

Gomez ruled out for "a significant part of" the rest of the season.

Joe Gomez injury update

Liverpool Football Club can confirm Joe Gomez has today undergone successful surgery to repair a tendon in his left knee.

www.liverpoolfc.com

Aké did his hamstring playing for the Netherlands as well.

These internationals are just such a shit show. First of all the domestic season is condensed enough as it is without condensing it yet further in order to squeeze a couple of 2-week international breaks in but most importantly... we're in the middle of a fucking pandemic. Loads of players from different clubs around the world get together with their national teams, stay in close proximity to each other for 10 days and then jet off back to their clubs. It seems like the perfect way to spread it around if any one of them picks it up.

 

[Scouse]

Money in football isn't there...

 

[Scouse]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdxZjRHq2SM&feature=emb_logo

 

[Embattle]

See Salah had a positive test for Covid 19.

 

[caLLous]

The silly sod went to a wedding in Egypt (I mean it was his brother's wedding and he was the best man but still...) and was seen dancing around in a packed room with a wrongly worn mask at some points and no mask at all at others. Him now testing positive is hardly surprising.

 

[Moriath]

The silly sod went to a wedding in Egypt (I mean it was his brother's wedding and he was the best man but still...) and was seen dancing around in a packed room with a wrongly worn mask at some points and no mask at all at others. Him now testing positive is hardly surprising.

Facepalm for him not you

 

[Embattle]

City have again looked deeply unimpressive, they just take too many passed with so many square balls.

 

[caLLous]

Or they were made to look deeply unimpressive by an outstanding defensive performance...

 

[Raven]

Great game for Spurs.

 

[Embattle]

Or they were made to look deeply unimpressive by an outstanding defensive performance...

They played well but MC have looked like this for a while.

 

[Aoami]

City have looked pretty average this season.

 

[Scouse]

Spoiler

lulz

 

[Scouse]

Just watched MOTD.

Jordan Henderson, Danny Murphy and Gary Linekar on VAR:

Henderson: "I'd rather play without it"

Danny Murphy: "Jordan Henderson, I agree with wholeheartedly and I have done for a long time".
Gary Linekar: "Yeah I know you do".
Danny Murphy: "Get rid. Get rid of it".
Gary Linekar: "I'm on board with that".

Manager after manager, player after player. Get fucking shot of V. A. R.

 

[Moriath]

Just watched MOTD.

Jordan Henderson, Danny Murphy and Gary Linekar on VAR:

Henderson: "I'd rather play without it"

Danny Murphy: "Jordan Henderson, I agree with wholeheartedly and I have done for a long time".
Gary Linekar: "Yeah I know you do".
Danny Murphy: "Get rid. Get rid of it".
Gary Linekar: "I'm on board with that".

Manager after manager, player after player. Get fucking shot of V. A. R.

Who is arguing ?

 

[Aoami]

Team gets done over by another correct VAR decision:

Team "We should get rid of VAR"
Fan of Team "We should get rid of VAR"

Classic victim complex stuff from Liverpool. Even Klopp has picked it up with these nonsensical rants about when his team plays. How about you only play at 3pm on Saturday but you don't get any TV money so you can't spend £150m on players every year. Deal?

 

[Scouse]

Oh do fuck off @Aoami - it's nothing to do with winning or losing. I don't really give a fuck about the result - I always said I'd stop watching football if it stopped being a human game and that's holding true - I'm rapidly losing any remaining enthusiasm for it and only cursorily follow it now.

VAR has sucked the remaining joy out of it for me.

However - it's been a constant theme - mourinho, guardiola, loads of players - all explicit and overt in their hatred of VAR.

It's not fixed any problems. It's brought in a host of others, as was always going to be the case.

And last night, when I flicked on to MOTD they had three professionals, including two presenters, one of who'm is a Leicester diehard and the cornerstone of BBC football broadcasting very clearly saying get rid of VAR.

Not because of a single result.
Not because of a single team.
Because, since it's been brought in and operated it's been a woeful shitshow - and pretty much every pro in the game fucking hates it.

So I posted what they said.

 

[caLLous]

Loads of people have been grumbling about it for ages but suddenly now Liverpool are up in arms we absolutely need to scrap it right now? Most of the previous times the complaint has been about the implementation of the rule that VAR is enforcing (usually either offside or hand ball) but now we need to bin it altogether because it has inconvenienced the mighty Liverpool. Everyone else just has a little dig and gets on with their life but oh no, not Liverpool, they have to write to the Premier League (fat lot of good that did) and now they're sending their players out on Twitter to have a good old moan.

They need to go back to basics with VAR, scrap how the rules are interpreted and start again. If an offside is so tight that you can't see it obviously without having to resort to fucking about with overlaid lines then stick with the on-pitch decision, if a decision on a hand ball or a foul is so difficult to come to then stick with the on-pitch decision, if you can't make your mind up within x seconds about anything then stick with the on-pitch decision.

And Jurgen Stropp can emphatically piss off with his whining about scheduling, Tottenham played 8 times in 22 days earlier in the season (including matches in Bulgaria and North Macedonia) - it was originally supposed to be 9 but Orient had to forfeit their match - and he has to play Wednesday night (at home) and then Saturday lunchtime and then not again until Tuesday? Diddums. I agree that it's more pronounced this season because the European group matches are squashed into 2 lots of 3 consecutive weeks but all of the clubs involved should have squads to be able to rotate enough to deal with that. If Klopp wants to play the same players into the ground then he can't suddenly be surprised Pikachu face when they start picking up soft tissue injuries.

 

[Raven]

VAR would be fine if it was used how it was supposed to be used in the first place.

 

[Aoami]

Oh do fuck off @Aoami - it's nothing to do with winning or losing. I don't really give a fuck about the result - I always said I'd stop watching football if it stopped being a human game and that's holding true - I'm rapidly losing any remaining enthusiasm for it and only cursorily follow it now.

VAR has sucked the remaining joy out of it for me.

However - it's been a constant theme - mourinho, guardiola, loads of players - all explicit and overt in their hatred of VAR.

It's not fixed any problems. It's brought in a host of others, as was always going to be the case.

And last night, when I flicked on to MOTD they had three professionals, including two presenters, one of who'm is a Leicester diehard and the cornerstone of BBC football broadcasting very clearly saying get rid of VAR.

Not because of a single result.
Not because of a single team.
Because, since it's been brought in and operated it's been a woeful shitshow - and pretty much every pro in the game fucking hates it.

So I posted what they said.

When I said "fan of team" I meant Danny Murphy.

Funny that VAR is what has taken the enjoyment out of football for you though, rather than clubs like Liverpool buying the league and making it uncompetitive outside of a few teams.

 

[Scouse]

Loads of people have been grumbling about it for ages but suddenly now Liverpool are up in arms we absolutely need to scrap it right now?

No.

I've been saying don't implement it, it'll be shit and not fix the problems on this forum for years.

After it was implemented I've gone "look! It IS shit!"

After that the managers and players of multiple teams started pitching in. (And I posted here about that too).

Last night Gary Linekar came out and said he was in favour of scrapping it - so I've reported that here.


But in this day and age of idiotic polarisation the response here is like it's tribal - it's about liverpool, or it's "suddenly" a thing.

Don't be so childish - you're acting like brexiters in the face of overwhelming evidence standing by something that is clearly shit, that was always going to be shit, that is almost universally hated and condemned by the professional players, managers and, now, key pundits.

It's fuck all to do with Liverpool (Klopp said all the decisions were fine, he's angry about player injuries). It's 100% about VAR being a hated, game killing piece of shit that has created more problems than it could ever solve.

But take us out of the EU, eh? Football was so broken and VAR is going to take us into a golden promised land...

 

[Aoami]

You're talking shite. If VAR is scrapped, as soon as big teams start getting shit decisions against them, it'll be "we need technology" again.

 

[Scouse]

You're talking shite. If VAR is scrapped, as soon as big teams start getting shit decisions against them, it'll be "we need technology" again.

People are always going to whine. But VAR was a "fix" that was never going to work and detracts from the game.

Say the professionals, the players, the managers.

So, it's not just me "talking shit" - but Mourinho, Klopp, Guardiola, Linaker, all the fucking players. They're all talking shit, apparently. Because they know fuck all in detail about the all-consuming focus of their whole lives, or something.


But I guess a few brexiteer-minded Freddies know better than the pros. It just must be easier to think of yourself that way, than simply admit when you're wrong.

 

[caLLous]

No.

I've been saying don't implement it, it'll be shit and not fix the problems on this forum for years.

After it was implemented I've gone "look! It IS shit!"

After that the managers and players of multiple teams started pitching in. (And I posted here about that too).

Last night Gary Linekar came out and said he was in favour of scrapping it - so I've reported that here.


But in this day and age of idiotic polarisation the response here is like it's tribal - it's about liverpool, or it's "suddenly" a thing.

Don't be so childish - you're acting like brexiters in the face of overwhelming evidence standing by something that is clearly shit, that was always going to be shit, that is almost universally hated and condemned by the professional players, managers and, now, key pundits.

It's fuck all to do with Liverpool (Klopp said all the decisions were fine, he's angry about player injuries). It's 100% about VAR being a hated, game killing piece of shit that has created more problems than it could ever solve.

But take us out of the EU, eh? Football was so broken and VAR is going to take us into a golden promised land...

And yet countries across Europe use it week in week out seamlessly. I know you said you know people in Europe who also hate VAR but on the whole it's received overwhelmingly differently on the continent. Issues have been raised since its introduction and they've been addressed. They (I know people in Europe too) can't believe how badly it's being used in the UK. The English FA have taken it, thought they could do better, and completely fucked it (and ignoring an existing, perfectly-fine system and thinking they could do something better on their own is very much a UK trait). Just look at the Champions League matches, you barely even notice it's in use.

For example, in the Eredivisie they have a totally different implementation of the offside rule:

A lot of Dutch fans didn't even realise this was a thing, it's that well-implemented.

It's not the system - it's the rules that the system is being used to enforce.

 

[Aoami]

People are always going to whine. But VAR was a "fix" that was never going to work and detracts from the game.

Say the professionals, the players, the managers.

So, it's not just me "talking shit" - but Mourinho, Klopp, Guardiola, Linaker, all the fucking players. They're all talking shit, apparently. Because they know fuck all in detail about the all-consuming focus of their whole lives, or something.


But I guess a few brexiteer-minded Freddies know better than the pros. It just must be easier to think of yourself that way, than simply admit when you're wrong.

Interesting that you use Brexit as an analogy actually, because just like VAR in essence it's not a terrible idea, it's just been thought out badly and implemented worse.

 

[Aoami]

Arsenal are fucking whack

 

[Scouse]

@Gwadien, @caLLous, @Aoami

View: https://twitter.com/JamesMilner/status/1332742400981172225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw


Milner also "talking shit" I guess.

How many pros have to talk shit before some people will realise the mistake we've made.