Jackson now has the same amount of hat tricks as Bergkamp and Cantona. My goat.
Jackson now has the same amount of hat tricks as Bergkamp and Cantona. My goat.
Big Ange being a true Spurs man trying to protect Harry Kanes record at Bayern by proving that it's not just the Bundesliga that plays suicidal high lines.
Based on what I'm now reading about Postecoglou, this is par for the course, he has one way of playing and that's it.
Strap in for the next few weeks when they don't have their first choice defence.
Postecoglou with a truly great interview as well. They'll win nothing under him but they'll love the journey, and I suppose that's what it's all about.
Yeah, as I mentioned above, I really don't understand why so many fans are so bad at judging things even remotely objectively. Maybe I'm a soulless robot, or just a smarmy dickhead who gets off on being contrary (the latter is obviously true to an extent), but I went to about 100 West Brom games as a season ticket holder, and was as Baggies mad as anyone. Losses could ruin entire weeks. Yet I reckon I only left games feeling like we were properly robbed by officials a handful of times, and even then with the understanding they largely even themselves out and the odd game like that is inevitable. I understand that you can be tempted to think every tackle against you is a foul and every tackle your team makes is fine IN THE MOMENT, but it always makes me laugh when if a team loses a game and they had a penalty given against them/a player of theirs sent off, they almost always boo the officials at full time. Or the classic where one of your players gets sent off for brutally assaulting one of their players, and the first time one of their lot gets a booking you sarcastically cheer the referee.
It would be one thing if this was just all part of the pantomime of it all, but I do honestly reckon a lot of fans actually are this myopic about their own team. Just seems weird to me.
As someone who goes to a few games at the Hawthorns a year, it's hard to come away from a game thinking you've been robbed because at the end of the day you're just happy to have been in the presence of the anthropomorphised Combi-Boiler for 90 minutes.
When I went to the Challenge Cup final a few months ago I sat down and the first thing another supporter said to me was 'We're fucked today with Kendall' (referee Chris Kendall), and I thought about your post about the bloke who claimed that even the fictitious referee hated West Brom.
And now people are giving the clapping emojis and 'pure class from Big Ange' for saying 'You have to accept the referees decision'. The guy was booked for dissent against the referees decisions. This is fucking mad.
I'm preparing a 10,000 word doctoral thesis on what I've probably posted here before in short form, which is that football and rugby league fans NEED to scream at referees regardless of the merits of doing so, because they're working class games which provide a rare outlet for people to send consequence-free rage against the power structures that frustrate their lives, whereas rugby union and cricket respect the referees/umpires, sometimes in a performatively over-the-top fashion, because they're middle class games watched by people for whom the power structures work very nicely thank you.
All these people on twitter wanting ACCOUNTABILITY for people who earn a fraction of what the far more error-prone players from their favourite team earn is a good example.
Definitely. Spurs randomly lost their heads after the Son disallowed goal. Chelsea were actually the better team at that point. Just completely forgot how to play football with the way Spurs were setting up defensively.
Man City on Sunday. Another Jackson masterclass incoming.
I almost back us to get something against them. Home non-defeats thus far have come against Luton (3-0), Arsenal (2-2) and Liverpool (1-1). Teams that come out, and Luton, give us half a squeak.
Will help if Lesbo Fernandez doesn't play like all his muscles have been surgically removed.
People going on about Postecoglou not complaining about the ref last night as well. He literally has nothing to complain about. Two potential red cards weren't given against them and the two that they got were absolute stonewallers. The goals that were disallowed were all correct as well. I think maybe the only call that maybe went against Spurs all night was the Reece James elbow although I'm not sure how hard he caught him, it could be a red or a yellow but you couldn't complain too much either way.
Managers complain about correct decisions all the time.
What was amazing was that a passage of play where two Spurs players should have been sent off was followed by both of those same players actually being sent off.
All in all I don't think I've ever seen a more stupid match. Stupid players, stupid managers, very stupid fans, officials were stupid at times, I was stupid, you were stupid, and that bloke over there was thick as mince.
It was the most entertained I've been watching a game in a long, long time.
People will take Ange's vegemite encrusted member out of their mouths after Newcastle fire double figures into them over 2 games.
It happens. The price of entertainment.
They play exactly the same football as everyone else in the league. Let's not pretend that the high line, play it out from the back stuff is anything other than completely ubiquitous now.
I appreciate that, the better your players the better it is. Football is as good now as it ever has been and why the dinosaurs have all but disappeared.
I will give Mourinho credit he was the absolute master of his craft. Guy saw and could predict things nobody could, behaviourally.
Soon the people playing this style will be the dinosaurs, and something else will be the innovation which will then take 5 years to filter through the whole game. Maybe it'll be overloading the flanks. Maybe it'll be the team positioning itself on the halfway line as seen last night with NFL style wide receivers trying to break through. Maybe people will be picked purely to sprint back from the offside trap with no intention of them ever touching the ball. Maybe someone will choose to play without a goalkeeper to get the extra man in the press. The march of progress is unstoppable.
Anti-football [read: defending or perhaps even 'control' now] is what wins in all of the 'footballs'.
The high-flying offense, laudable as it might be from an entertainment perspective, and it is, generally gets ground down in the final analysis.
How has Antony Taylor managed to get the Chelsea Man City game this weekend after being demoted to the Championship and getting another penalty decision completely wrong
Because he is DEFINITELY NOT from Manchester.
The next revolution in football is assisting yourself.
Should have happened multiple times yesterday given Tottenhams line.
Having now seen the first half, I've no idea how the two Spurs players weren't sent off first go around. Romero is a horrible player.
I'd love to have a read.
Regarding the referee thing, it's a constant battle with Sunderland fans. The majority just think the standard is shite, which probably isn't far from the truth. I would always argue that the pace of the game and the scrutiny it now comes under makes refereeing a thankless and pretty much impossible job.
Many fans claim they just call for consistency, but are rather inconsistent in their judgements a lot of the time, and some fans are absolutely adamant that certain refs either hate us or come to Sunderland to show they're not intimidated by the big crowd/club. This was particularly evident during our League One days, whereas in the Premier League the refs were apparently always in favour of the big teams over little old Sunderland.
Slightly on topic, some are now firmly entrenched in the 'everything is being done to benefit the Saudis/Sky/Newcastle.'
Yeah, a particularly weird theory I've seen advanced by the mad Arsenal fans is that Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher are being paid off by the PGMOL, as if the north west pair don't earn enough as it is without having a refereeing body top them up.
All fanbases have their moments, but Arsenal and Liverpool fans remain unrivalled in their ridiculousness.
Gary Neville is firmly in bed with the Saudis, apparently. Fortunately I don't really listen to any of them. Carragher's views are roundly ignored on the Sunderland forum because he spat at someone so shouldn't be in his job. Females are only there to make the quota and Dan Sturridge was dressed as a bin liner or something so his views don't count.
There's a particular cultish element in the online Arsenal fans that's been there since deep back into Wenger's time. I think originally it developed from the young metro liberal types who typically support Arsenal rallying together against their team's theoretically good football losing to Bolton and Stoke. God knows what it's morphed into now.
Michael Owen doesn't have any dreams, his imagination barely stretches to cover the time he's awake.
This banger comes from "Beansy", courtesy of BBC's text thingy:
Howe being found out in the Champions League. Out of his depth. We need someone experienced to save our European season.
People like that send in bullshit purposely because they know it’ll get them published. Freaks.
Always thought Beansy was a blade.
Of course he is, the bastard.
Brandt’s final ball has been horrendous in this game
Always works a treat. Lovely jubbly
Last edited by Waffdon; 07-11-2023 at 07:23 PM.
As much as I agree the majority of online Arsenal fans are melts, someone has asked chatGPT to write a match report for monday night but one version Arsenal and one version Tottenham, the Arsenal one came out as 'Emirates Shame' but the Spurs one was 'brave Tottenham'
'brave' is always used when either 1) a team down to 9 men are beaten by between 2-4 goals or 2) the Japanese rugby team avoid a 20 point defeat against a top tier nation.
No no, it's a just big IA conspiracy to con the world into believing the Earth (and footballs, indeed) are spherical.