Football/Soccer 2012/2013 Season Thread

[Milsap]

More scenes from Hillsborough: Chris Kirkland attacked by a Leeds fan.

I agree with everybody else when they say ban the guy and prosecute him, but for Wednesday fans to have the tenacity to play the victim card baffles me.

On Boxing Day, Wednesday came to Walsall. They did the following:

Threw bottles and rubbish at ball boys
Invaded the pitch several times*
Tried to get into the Tile Choice Stand to start a fight, something they did all game.
Trashed and set fire to a toilet, resulting in over £1,000 in damages.

So when they go to other peoples' grounds and assault children, run onto the pitch and cause criminal damage to another team's stadium it's all a bit of a laugh. But when it happens to them they'll go crying to the FA.

* Pitch invasions resulted in 8 minutes of injury time, something we used to score twice and win 2-1

[OVOxo]

^ Every team has a selection of fans like that. Shame but oh well.

Diouf is a legend btw! His interview with L'Equipe the other day was genius!

Heskey has 2 in 2 for the Jets now, won a penalty too =o

Spurs v Chelsea with no Bale and Dembele; interesting. I hope Sigurdsson has a good game. Tyne-Wear derby tomorrow too =]

[Liam]

AVB bought Mata and Cahill for Chelsea and they both packed his new team.

LOL

[f3raligatr]

Sheffield Wednesday fans in having double standards shocker!!

Dave Jones as well, I'd have thought somebody with his background would know better than to tar all fans of the same team as 'animals'. Doesn't excuse the chap (who Leeds fans have actually recognised and given his identity up to the authorities, by the way) or his actions, absolutely dispicable, but.. you know.. lets not get carried away and tar us all as animals, or pretend us big, nasty Leeds supporters are all scum.

[OVOxo]

Did Rooney get the match ball?

This AM three of Hazard / Oscar / Mata is so deadly right now; before this season I saw Mata as overrated but he really is playing well so far!

Arselol too!

[Liam]

Can't wait for MOTD today.

[OVOxo]

I didn't watch; had a session on FM for the first time in ages instead. Should have done Uni work though I guess!

Thirty minutes until Shola unleashes havoc!

[Liam]

Watched a REALLY good match last night.

Deportivo 4 - 5 Barcelona

• Lionel Messi's 21st Barcelona hat-trick (what a man)
• Mascherano got sent off
• Jordi Alba chipped his own keeper and scored at the other side too

Was really entertaining stuff.

[Milsap]

Sheffield Wednesday fans in having double standards shocker!!

Dave Jones as well, I'd have thought somebody with his background would know better than to tar all fans of the same team as 'animals'. Doesn't excuse the chap (who Leeds fans have actually recognised and given his identity up to the authorities, by the way) or his actions, absolutely dispicable, but.. you know.. lets not get carried away and tar us all as animals, or pretend us big, nasty Leeds supporters are all scum.

It's like I said- When they trashed our ground and attacked ball boys it was perfectly okay, but when it happens at their ground it's a crime against nature.

[OVOxo]

Tiote shouldn't have been sent off; awful decision.

The likes of Messi, Ronaldo and Neymar constantly keep on performing. If the rumours are true that the latter has an agreement to join Barcelona after the 2014 World Cup it'll be very interesting to see how that develops.

[f3raligatr]

And so we come here again to discuss how Manchester United get the decisions once again..

And people wonder why I have an obscene amount of hatred towards them.

[Milsap]

Probably the same reasons as me, Rob

Like I just asked you on Facebook: What did Fergie buy this time?

[OVOxo]

Fergie made a great tactical call by replacing Howard Webb with Mark Clattenberg tbf

Suarez's celebration at Moyes was fantastic btw... as was Phil Neville's dive! :hah:

[Typhlosion]

All this nonsense about the Torres sending off being a real injustice is starting to really annoy me. Especially now I've watched this incident about six or seven times.

The real injustice from the match was the Hernandez goal being given when he was clearly offside. Torres I have very little sympathy for. Football is a contact sport and I'm sick of commentators (and thus half the mimicking FaceTwit population) suddenly deciding that if you touch someone it's definitely a foul. Did that touch cause Torres to go down? No, it definitely did not. It was a minor touch and Torres still got past Evans before throwing himself to the floor. My first instinct upon seeing it was that Torres dived and that's the same opinion the referee had. Torres is not the only one who does this sadly, this isn't a dig just at him. It's to all players who do it. He could have gone clean through on goal but chose not to, he chose to go down. The touch did not send him down. Therefore he dived and got exactly what he deserved.

His ridiculous actions afterwards just convince me even more. Holding his knee for a good ten seconds until he realised he was the one who had been found out, at which point the pain magically disappeared.

Diving will continue in football for as long as people continue to defend it. The referee on Sunday booked two players for diving under minimal contact. Torres and Valencia both did it and rightly both got booked. The offside goal was the fault of the linesman, not the referee. I thought the referee had a good game and should be applauded for booking players for diving, getting the decision correct both times. Yet for some reason we're lambasting him for doing it. So he probably won't bother next time. And diving will continue.

And frankly, for this ridiculous overreaction whenever a referee stands up to it, we'll all have to take a lot of the blame for that.

[f3raligatr]

All this nonsense about the Torres sending off being a real injustice is starting to really annoy me. Especially now I've watched this incident about six or seven times.

The real injustice from the match was the Hernandez goal being given when he was clearly offside. Torres I have very little sympathy for. Football is a contact sport and I'm sick of commentators (and thus half the mimicking FaceTwit population) suddenly deciding that if you touch someone it's definitely a foul. Did that touch cause Torres to go down? No, it definitely did not. It was a minor touch and Torres still got past Evans before throwing himself to the floor. My first instinct upon seeing it was that Torres dived and that's the same opinion the referee had. Torres is not the only one who does this sadly, this isn't a dig just at him. It's to all players who do it. He could have gone clean through on goal but chose not to, he chose to go down. The touch did not send him down. Therefore he dived and got exactly what he deserved.

His ridiculous actions afterwards just convince me even more. Holding his knee for a good ten seconds until he realised he was the one who had been found out, at which point the pain magically disappeared.

Diving will continue in football for as long as people continue to defend it. The referee on Sunday booked two players for diving under minimal contact. Torres and Valencia both did it and rightly both got booked. The offside goal was the fault of the linesman, not the referee. I thought the referee had a good game and should be applauded for booking players for diving, getting the decision correct both times. Yet for some reason we're lambasting him for doing it. So he probably won't bother next time. And diving will continue.

And frankly, for this ridiculous overreaction whenever a referee stands up to it, we'll all have to take a lot of the blame for that.

The Torres incident goes down to personal opinion, but I believed he was fouled. Evans caught him, the speed they were both going at would've caused such. Torres could've chosen to stay on his feet, which you have this problem with, but this goes both ways and I can think of plenty of times where you have defended your own players for going down under minimal contact because it was a foul, such as Rooney's penalty against Almunia a few years ago. Even more brilliant is how the other side of the coin, Ivanovic's sending off was under minimal contact and again, Young could've easily chosen to go clean through on goal but chose not to, got the man sent off.

It's this huge issue of inconsistent that I absolutely cannot stand because it always, always seems to jump into your favour. For me, you've got two instances of 'choosing to go down' in that match, Young and Torres. Both incidents resulted in two different men being sent off, one instance of the 'dive' being punished, and one instance where it was not. Nothing's really been said about this though, which annoys me. Evans against Liverpool is another one, you either send both men off, or you don't book either, you cannot have it both ways. Yet, your lot got the rub of the green there and in both matches, just when you were starting to find the match swinging out of your favour, two inconsistencies occur in two of your hardest away matches and all of a sudden, you end up with six points and very questionable decisions.

For me, I do not believe the referee had a good game at all on Sunday. He was inconsistent, seemed to lose control of the match with his decisions and turned a match that had just turned tasty into an absolute steal for yourselves. I'd have been very, very tempted to pull a Drogba myself..

The entire issue of diving will always be there because of how the game has changed. The speed of the game and the pace that players can reach now make it harder and harder, when you're on the pitch at that level, to differentiate which are dives and which aren't. You're also paying players in excess of 100k a week to win you matches, to take every single chance and to take the correct decision in every chance to win you the most points that you can. They will take every opportunity they get because it is grilled into them. If they can get somebody sent off, they will. If they can get a freekick when they're running out of space, they will. The only way you can really change this is to enforce 'after-match' punishments or to go down video technology route, punishing those who have blatantly dived to win a foul and not owned up to it afterwards. Will never happen.

Could you see the FA coming out and fining Ashley Young for diving against Aston Villa? Against QPR? Against Chelsea? Could you see the FA coming out and charging Gerrard with diving against Sheffield United (2006/7)? Don't think I could, but I could easily see them take prejudgice and fine Suarez for instance.