Rimbeux

“making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball” But as this happened, he’s offside. Unless the argument is that Lovren isn’t attempting to block a pass to an offside Kane, and Kane being where he is has nothing to do with that piece of play

It doesn’t just reset though, what they’re on about is a scenario where the ball breaks to a a player who looks offside but wasn’t involved in the piece of play, that’s been same for years. This idea a player can be played on if a through ball to him isn’t cleared properly is just wrong

They got the law wrong and were all but asking for help from tv, unacceptable. The odd thing is the amount of back up they’ll get for the offside nonsense. People will now be claiming that you can stand offside and so long at the defender touches a pass to you on the way through, it’s not offside. This or they’re trying to claim to pass wasn’t to Kane. Gallagher seemed to be trying to introduce a criteria of the defender’s competence into whether it was offside or not, effectively saying that Lovren should have cleared it, so Kane was free to play it Expect there will be an urgent unpublicised correction of that offside notion and we won’t see another like it.

Panic

Thought first half we cracked their code and they couldn’t cope. Essentially they rely on Dembélé attracting two in midfield then finding Eriksen in space between the lines who can then attract players to him and open up teams. We kept robbing Dembélé and they had no alternative route out, meant Kane barely touched it for 45mins. Then we stopped doing that

Kind of reflexive default plan, so true that an extra man against Kane wasn’t the issue, rather winking it and keeping it in midfield was. Interesting that Spurs move was to intro more passing at the back and more solidity in midfield to allow them to push fullbacks forward and leave one guy in midfield effectively. Quite Brendan in many ways from them. We’d likely have been more comfortable going 451 with two sitting midfield players, rather than 352?

Yeh agree, our midfield get away with speculative balls in the general direction of exceptional players, this can’t abide

Maybe he should have cut it out, but the basic law is that an attacker who impacts on a defender’s ability to play the ball is offside; it’s not a debate on the laws, Lovren is attempting to block a pass to Kane who is offside and forcing him to make a decision

That’s fair and right, should have had a yellow fur time wasting, it’s part of his job to get one

He’s offside from the initial pass all the way through to the dive, he’s always active and never played on, it’s a basic error from the assistant.

There’s zero to justify the first pen, beyond a mistake and a guess for the dive For the 2nd it’s a marginal offside call and a piece of gamesmanship that many pundits will applaud.

He needs to be stood down, the first offside was indefensible, the 2nd pen played on at least naivety

Nothing to do with him, he did his job, four players either failed to get a touch or effect the strike in any way. He was excellent today

They do to an extent, it’s a lack of the right players and the right mentality, see Karius trying to start a counter with a throw out and us losing the ball 30 yards from goal or Can going on a 50:50 run from full back through the middle of the park. Nobody put their foot on the ball and tried to keep it second half That said, the 1st pen is offside all day long and no contact, the second is marginally offside and bought by the Spurs guy literally jumping into the Liv player who’s pulled out of challenging for the ball. It’s at the very best incompetence, neither justify the Assistant’s actions.

Just did a google and if it’s accurate, he’s only ever taken two penalties in club football, both for us, both against Huddersfield, same keeper, missed one and scored one. He’s 4:0 for Egypt including age group internationals

Not really much of an update, no decision yet, thoroughness etc. Might FA be coordinating this case with the Rodriguez allegation in order to make sure same threshold and standard of evidence is used or maybe they’re just damn slow. Can we all but eliminate the probability Firmino has admitted guilt for anything or incriminated himself? No new angle has leaked, no hot mike either. Are they just exhausting every route to substantiate the allegations? We’re now pretty much at the time it took to charge Suárez, but pretty sure there wasn’t press silence in between, rather lots of briefing and articles, and certainly not from the clubs http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2018/02/01/fa-still-investigating-claims-roberto-firmino-racially-abused/

The Giroud thing us odd to me in that they’d allow a supposed rival to get exactly the sort of player they need, but they seem to have accepted some kind of junior status. But compared with what was looking likely, Sanchez off for £30m and scrambling for a replacement, they did fine

Reckon they’ll bench Lacazette more often than not, he’s not great at leading the line and doesn’t score that heavily to make up for it

For whomever put the deals together, they’ve pulled off some great transfer chess, the kind of stuff that would normally be dismissed as fantasy football. Yes they got themselves into a crisis scenario in the first place, but they’ve come out of it without being left obviously short in attack

There seems little sharp pencil in the back to make sure we get deals done, almost a resignation about what wasn't to be. It's as if the priority is getting a deal on our terms rather than getting the player. That might be sensible in some cases, but can also bring on the kind of complacency that atrophied Arsenal under Wenger

Job done, well in boys, next

True, but they’ve at least moved to replace the body with high level players. We on the other hand haven’t and now have Ings and Solanke as our next attacking players, tasked with changing games and starting vital fixtures for the rest of the season. There’s no comfort there

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