JRC

Can't blame him - they're flying atm. Up to 3rd with 6 wins on the bounce, having been down at 15th. Shows how quickly poor form can turn round.... (OK ...after replacing the manager, but not suggesting that as a solution to our current woes, obvs)

I'm more chilled today than after Brighton. They are very good as well as pragmatic. Can even admire Foden, who I wasn't convinced about previously (English hype, flat track etc). Yesterday's Allison calamities don't imply any substantive issue to resolve. He won't have many days like that, best in a game and season like this one - fwiw I think they would have won anyway, and certainly deserved to. There is no-one else around us concerns me any more than any other. We are as likely to finish 2nd as 7th; get Fab and Hendo back in midfield and Jota fit and the former is more likely. Back to back title wins is tough, even more so a third 90+ point season, as City proved last year. Their consistency this year is the perfect example of what we can legitimately aim for next seasonal. Come On You Mighty Reds!

PGMOL will be too busy writing a grovelling letter to OGS apologising for not giving them the penalty that could have made it 10. Meanwhile - have we had a response re the decisions in the Everton game yet?

Always had going to the River Plate/Boca Superclasico on my football bucket list, but now it would have to be San Lorenzo. Fantastic scenes there.

Isn't Wilson a Mackem? I know a few Sunderland fans, and they almost burst pride about Henderson as one of their own - and justifiably so. The run behind Salah for the second is excellent and typical - and you can almost read shock and admiration in his body language as he sees the control and finish.

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I'd say that was an...interesting...take on what I wrote, so let me be clear (hopefully). My main gripe is with the spurious application of inherently flawed technology, and my response is to just use as much technology as is needed to make a human-level decision - benefit of the doubt to onside; if the VAR official needs more than a 'reasonable' length of time to look at it, from a good angle with a horizontal line as a guide, and can't tell if they are offside without applying all the jiggery-pokery - then they are not off-side. Given that view - then whether the system is administered by challenge or by review of every major incident - is immaterial. My main beef about challenge is that if you have a solution that allows (virtually) every decision to be made correctly, and non-intrusively, why create a new in-match process and associated strategy/game theory which could end up with an incorrectly awarded/denied goal being allowed to stand/ruled out because of previous (possibly legitimate) challengeable incidents - even though the VAR official is fully aware it is wrong and could simply advise the Ref, but is not allowed to? We would have lost a challenge if we had used it to see if Pickford/Van Dyck was a penalty; it doesn't make it any less unfair, nor inimical to the integrity of the game, if we were then denied a late winner for an incorrectly called off-side goal because the VAR official - who can easily see it was a goal, and which will be confirmed on every sports channel within seconds - isn't then allowed to tell the Ref.

Really don't see the value of a challenge system. A genuine and obvious howler of a bad decision, which the technology clearly proves, is no less a blight or an injustice, nor less unnecessary, because the challenger - who will often be making that challenge (or lack of challenge) on gut feel - either wont risk wasting one or has already used them. I also suspect the risk/reward ratio doesn't make it equitable, given the number of potential incidents. FWIW, offside law was written to be applied by the human eye - nearer to and behind are sufficiently broad and well understood spatial terms. TV technology allows a very quick check and an enhanced viewing compared with that of the linesman, albeit with it's own inbuilt margins of error. That we are now 'clarifying' those broad, simple spatial terms to effect the (imperfect) technology - teeshirt sleeve length, centres of gravity, vertical lines -, when the problem to be resolved by VAR was never that too many goals were being scored by players whose armpit was offside, is a Swiftian absurdity. I don't think the answer is better technology (faster frame rates) or introducing a new variable in challenges; just start from the recognition that players are normally and by default onside for most of the game unless specific conditions apply, as per the laws. If the basic technology to augment the linesmans best possible view (in line camera angle, fixed at reasonable estimate of point of contact, horizontal line for the position of the ball or last defender ) cannot allow the VAR bloke to almost immediately see that the player is offside, then benefit of the doubt goes to the attacker - they're onside (not on-field decision; I would go with 30 second maximum image review time). I cant recall one hypermarginal VAR offside call in the past season and a half that anyone could have had a serious complaint about if given onside on this basis. The very fact that you need to go to forensic levels of spatial analysis - however consistently applied - to make the decision means you've already gone down the wormhole.

And the teams in 4th and 5th were respectively goal difference and 3 points behind with 2 and 3 games in hand. We were looking at 6th. 82 was even worse - 13th on Boxing Day. I think we won it with about 4 games to go in the end. Never give up.

Even the clarification is nonsense - 'prioritising' the interference with play, my a***. In all the discussion of the similar Lovren-Kane incident a few years back (when Moss, again, didn't know the Law properly), those defending the decision (PGMOL, IFAB, ex-Refs) admitted that IF Kane had moved towards the ball as Lovren tried to clear it - let alone challenged him and took the ball off him - , he would have been offside; that was a defined example of making your offside position active . I doubt very much that since then they have amended the guidance to change it that this interpretation no longer applied (since they have so promptly 'changed it back'.) But then again, these not-fit-for-purpose f***ers are the ones actively undermining the credibility of the game to satisfy some weird, petty, football-phobic egomania, so maybe they did change it BECAUSE THEY COULD.

I think I'm feeling some of it differently. s***e as it was to lose to Burnley the other day, it would have been much worse to have been there and experienced it live. I would not have been able so easily to slip into the detached, 'meh' mode that I have been able to adopt in the circumstances. I can only look back at last season's achievements with complete joy - that we weren't in the ground, or at St George's Hall, to celebrate doesn't really dampen the burstjng pride of seeing that trophy on our wall, shirts, permanent record etc. - for the vast majority of our fans being at the match or the celebration is not an option anyway. (OK, admission - my lad and I went up to Anfield, irresponsibly I know, for the wild celebrations on the night it was confirmed, so we had some of that adrenaline-fuelled, communal joy) Winning 2 years running - even more so, getting nearly 100 points 3 years running - is historically unusual, so in many ways I have always been inured to the potential disappointment of not winning it, or getting 90+ points, this year, whether through getting pipped by a point like 2 years ago, or just not being able to keep up with the pacesetters. If anything, a damp squib of a season shaped massively by injuries and played in a bubble is the least worst version of failing to defend the title. So be it. (Again, personal perspective - I've seen us win it 14 times in my lifetime, most of those times being personally present when we did; and many years in between when we didn't, even when we were historically dominant). BTW - doesn't mean I'm throwing the towel in. Look at 81-82 after the dismal defeat (to City, ironically) on Boxing Day; 85-86 and the (reigning champions) Blues lording it over us, winning at Anfield in February. This season is already more bats*** mental than those, plenty of twists to come yet.

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He's OK when he's in the Zone.

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Saw the 'Facts' thing being recycled again after Monday. Now routinely presented as a meltdown that cost us the league, 'master of mind games etc.' At the time, nearly all commentators - apart from the well-known Ferguson shills - admitted Rafa was right in pretty much everything he said (even the Referees?). Also - we won more points per game that season after the rant than before (we were already in a mini-slump of draws), but Utd were simply unstoppable (13 1-0 wins virtually on the bounce, iirc)

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FFS - poor as we have been these last 3 games, it's still a long way short of a meltdown and pretty comparable with what the supposedly challenging teams have been through at some point this weird season; yet we are the ones for whom it is terminal? Poor for a month when we won 7-0 away 17 days ago, 3 days after beating (well) the team then at the top of the table? Whilst primary challengers City were - like us - drawing at home to West Brom - yet they are now unstoppable? In anything but the last 2-3 seasons, 2 defeats at this stage would be League winning form. We have been spoilt for a few seasons, but this is much more the norm. Considering we still managed to get worked up even when we were running away with it last year it's not surprise that a nip and tuck season with highs and lows might f*** with our collective heads. Bring on United and let's batter them back to the s***e mean they have been delivering for much of the past 12 months. Beat City at Anfield - and believe we will - and any apparent advantage they may have will be gone. It's still ours to win, and we are still more than capable of doing it, it just won't be a cakewalk and there will be disappointments on the way. So come on - get a grip. (And win the Champions League while we are at it)

Yep - default is Onside. If you can't tell immediately from a decent image that a player is offside, they're on. Look at Mane vs Brighton - fractionally offside, but one look at the image and everyone agrees, no lines needed even. (And yes - that means I could happily accept Son's goal - as much as Hendo's and Salah's) Whatever issues VAR was brought in to solve, it sure as hell wasn't that there were too many goals being scored by players whose toes were a mm offside.

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Yes, that looked messy when it went pear-shaped. Have already heard rumours the sites on the edge of Chinatown/Baltic are part of it - on Wapping by the KFC, and at the lights opposite the proposed re-opening St James station.

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David Preece - after a nomark career - has made a name for himself as a specialist goalie pundit/journalist, often on the Radio (esp Talksport). Usually talks well and insightful, but maybe I just haven't heard him give an opinion about one of ours that I consider less than flattering and so been obliged to consign him to the deepest bowels of hell.