Logic

Unbelievable...

I love seeing pretty much ever journalist complaining about the "style" England is playing. It's like it's a shock to them that a Hodgson team sits back and plays kick-and-hope. Although he's been doing this for just short of 40 years. Long may it continue.

That would only happen if we would put pressure on the FA to do so. Which we obviously won't do.

The worth of the houses is what the owners of said houses find to be the price they'll be willing to sell at. Not the "market price". IMHO.

Well, they kind of do. His midfield is only there to provide defensive cover for the back 4. So the back 4 needs to kick it up to the forwards when in possession. Which sort of means building from the back doesn't it?

"This nation [Albania] isn't up to much... ... they [Albanians] are mostly criminals." Captain of the Icelandic national team ladies and gentlemen. He makes us so proud... (he was trying to be funny and has apologised)

Google translate of the letter. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.auf.org.uy/Portal/FileViewer.ashx%3Fid%3D806

Yup, especially one incident where he shields the ball from two Stoke players, one of them falls IIRC, and then runs up their left side with it and I think Walters then fouls him. Walters knew he'd fouled him so just keeps moving back to defend and then all of a sudden it's a free kick on the halfway-line to Stoke.

That's what was so obvious during this game. There was one threshold for fouls for them and another threshold for us. The same applied when it came to what was needed to get booked. If the ref is going to allow a very physical game, which I don't understand why refs need to do just because it's Stoke, he needs to allow both teams to do the same.

Poll made a good point about that. Would Huth have stepped on a team-mate in the same way? IMO there's no chance that he does that.

Ladyman is an unbelievable c*nt. I've never understood how he gets paid for writing his nonsense. And even if the dive by Suarez was bad, I've seen MOTD and others justify penalties for other teams based on even less contact than the one that originally made Suarez lose his balance. Somehow that has been ignored in all this. *disclaimer: I'm not saying it was a penalty but he originally lost his balance because one of the defenders nicks his right foot just a fraction earlier than that pic in the article is taken.

Excellent stuff. Here's hoping someone in the media picks it up...

This means one of the referees actually saw Huth stamp on Suarez. Yet he wasn't sent off. This would be shocking if it wasn't so predictable. Suarez is a marked man. Ever since Ferguson called for us to sell him (out of the country I'm guessing) his puppets have given players pretty much a free-for-all against Luis. And our club barely musters up a response or defence for him. Sickening. http://www.101greatgoals.com/gallery/gimages/image/gif-robert-huths-intentional-stamp-on-luis-suarez-not-even-a-booking/ It was bad enough so you could see Huth wore studs (and not that modern BS) on Suarez' chest.

No. We do need to do it both more and better. The reason? Other teams do it, get away with it and benefit from it. Meaning we need to be better than them at it.

That's the thing isn't it? We've seen less contact used as justification for giving our opponents (and the Mancs) a penalty. But we'll be quiet about it just trying to keep the media nice and friendly. Ignoring the fact that they are still gunning for us.

He/we needed to do that yesterday, before the football related shows start and absolutely before papers go to print. Whatever we do now is too late. Suarez will be (partly justified) labeled a diver and nothing will be said about him being stamped or being kicked around all game without proper protection. Nothing will be done to highlight the discrepancy between what it required for him to have committed a foul and then defenders fouling him. And yes, if the media won't do something we should use our own website to get our point across. And there's nothing stopping us from limiting access to the next PC to only those that we deem "worthy". But we won't do that because we are too nice. I saw somewhere on twitter yesterday that Pulis "abruptly walked away" after delivering his POV on Suarez' dive. The press didn't have time to question him about the stamp. There's simply so many problems with that, I don't even know where to start. A couple of thoughts though 1) They pushed The King back into the press box last season, do they only treat legends like that or do you have to be a LFC staff member for that treatment? 2) even if he walks away you are free to write what you want. And so on and so forth.

So it doesn't appear as if we mentioned anything about the stamp on Suarez after the match (I hope I'm wrong). Which means we let the manager of another team call for a ban on one of our players without even trying to defend him. We simply let the media run with the "he should be banned on monday" line without even the tiniest of reply or protestation. Instead of trying to get the media to focus on one of our players being stamped upon, an incident the referee apparently missed meaning instead of being 11v10 for about 85min, we let the media run with Suarez The Diver™. And people wonder why we don't win games? We don't win games because we lack a winning mentality both on and off the pitch. Look at proven winners in football. Would any of them not mention the fact that our biggest goal-threat got stamped early in the game? Would any team of winners not put real and sustained pressure on the ref after such an incident? We lack winners in this club. And as long as that continues we won't win enough games. It's that simple.

You can if you book them the first time they make a foul that warrants a booking. Instead of waiting for the second or third time like Mason did today. Referees shouldn't try to keep games 11v11. They should referee the game according to the laws of the game. If teams get people sent off, then maybe they'll stop playing like Stoke did today.

So... did we say something about the stamp?

My guess is that it's simply a question of lacking the winning mentality. We have one player willing to win at all costs. We need 11 of them on the field. Yes, they share it around but pretty much every one of them should have had a yellow before they finally got one. It's as if the ref thought "This is Stoke, they play a very physical game, so I'm going to keep my cards in the pocket for as long as I can". When he should be be reffing each incident on its own merit.

4 of 6 came after the 70th minute...

That isn't surprising seeing as we let the ref just completely do what he wanted without us saying a word. We should have been on his case from the moment Suarez was fouled then stamped. He shouldn't have had one second of calm after that.

Absolutely disgraceful performance by Mason. The difference between what was a foul if we did it and when they did it was unbelievable. Then his reluctance to book players from the start... just because Stoke are known to be very physical doesn't give the ref the right to not book them from the start. Unfortunately Suarez made one of the worst dives in history which means the media (and refs) will focus on that rather than the disgraceful fouls committed by Stoke on him.

He's taking men on, running at people, working hard off the ball, being brave etc etc. Things aren't working out for him but he's not have a "Downing" today.

I don't think the foul itself is bad (it's just funny/ridiculous). It's just the unsporting bit of it that irritates me. There's absolutely no attempt to play the ball. It's probably only a yellow by the letter of the law. But it's just so ridiculously unsporting behaviour that IMO it should be a red.