One more thing about Neville’s podcast yesterday: the part where he talks about physicality.
First, I agree that it is much better now than a few years back. And mostly I have no problem with letting the game flow. I’m very much on board with that. Brings back a lot of the fun in football.
However, Neville falls into a fallacy. He is first talking about apples (letting the game flow) and then makes the trick of talking about oranges (B Silva trying a Ramos special), when in his mind he is still thinking of speaking apples.
He’s equating good physicality (like Salah using his strength to out muscle Cancelo, Dias, Rodri; or a defender being aggressive in the challenge; or an old-fashioned shoulder to shoulder) with outright cheating (snide prick B Silva being prime example), and saying, as so many shit pundits will do, that the ref had an excellent game letting things flow.
Man Utd cheerleader-in-chief Martin Tyler’s thesis is that as the game is flowing, and ref allowing rough and tumble stuff, then the pull on Fab’s shirt is just part of the natural game and ref should’ve stuck to his original decision.
Yet, for the Jesus flop last week (where he planted both legs before a chasm opened up under him), they were all on about Jesus being clever and Thiago allowing the ref to make a decision.
Misses the point that the foul, and hence the disallowed goal, is given for the first offence. Kicking the ball out of the keepers hands wouldn’t even need to be checked unless it was for a potential red card.
Next time when Mo has the ball Bobby, Diogo and Darw should bodycheck and kick out everybody near Mo. Darw should also be trained take out their keeper so Mo can have a nice clear path to the netting.
Well it’s for the good flow of the game and entertainment. Who wants to watch bald men officiating and ruining the spectacle.
Got to be honest with you folks, I was fearing the worst.
The Rangers game, while it’s nice to stick a few in, at the same time had me thinking…’ Alright lads settle the fuck down and save some of these for Sunday!’
I thought they were going to hurt us…badly.
Then I saw Milner starting at rightback and didn’t want to watch.
…but what a performance !
I have no idea where its been all season, but if confidence was low, thats the shot in the arm we needed.
‘Best team in the world’ and we could have done them by 4
I was actually thinking something similar - as if you use up all your goes at once. Completely illogical, of course, but it seems to hold a similar nagging logic in line with wearing the lucky underpants during the game.
I used to think he was a decent-to-good football writer but his Man City bias comes across loud and clear this morning and, worse, he has exposed his shocking misunderstanding of Jurgen’s tactical development:
Klopp-ism, a way of playing where the variations are always to become a louder, faster version of yourself, to be this again, but more, seemed to have reached something of an end point.
