Kid in the Riot

7 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

I think when we post mortum our season that will be (ahem) the “biggest bit” of Liams reign.

I go back to the QPR game. There is nothing wrong with getting defence right first - but he came in somewhere where the defence wasn’t (barring injuries) really an issue and went ultra negative first. It was almost as if what was at the club before him didn’t matter and he had to follow a set pattern of how you build things.

Fast forward through the season up until Easter and he dogmatically tried to impose a style on the team they weren’t suited to. I don’t think there’s any coincidence the better performances were more counter attacking as opposed to what we class as “Manningball” of heavy retention of possession, often for possessions sake.

Post Easter, he’s changed tack in how we play. It’s more than a “tweak”, it’s a fundamental in terms of intent and suitability to the squad. And shockingly, it’s getting better results.

I don’t care how he got to the conclusion - whether it was the risk of the sack, an epiphany or taking tactical advice from Tinnion. But I don’t think it’s an unfair conclusion that prior to this run, Liam had caused most of his own problems by how he was setting us up.

Do I think we could have made the playoffs under either? Only if we replaced Scott properly which we didn’t try and do until January. Do I think Liam lessened our chances of an unlikely top six finish this season by the way he set us up, and managed the game “in match”? Absolutely.

 

This thread is about Pearson, not Manning?

18 minutes ago, One Team said:

I’ve said here before Fevs I heard he was involved in both the sacking and the appointment. I get your points but I’ve a different opinion based on I was told by an impeccable source. 

Yes Manning was 100% Tins appointment, and as you say he was clearly instrumental in Pearson's removal too. 

2 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Depends doesnt it?

Depends if he buys you a coffee, or not?

43 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I would tend to trust the Head of Medical, wouldn’t you?  

I don't think Tommy Conway, Rob Atkinson or Alex Scott, to name but three, would.

Can anyone spot the Man City fan on this thread?

12 minutes ago, Stortz said:

Hi Phil, I appreciate your reply.

When people seek to embellish descriptions of incidents or individuals by drawing attention to the colour of the skin of those involved, it's very rarely to draw a positive connotation, is it.

Would you have described white prostitutes primarily by the colour of their skin?

It seemed that you were especially horrified in your initial post due to the race of those involved? Incidentally, you must be quite the catch to elicit such a response amongst these black prostitutes, despite your family being nearby.

No further axe to grind, but language is important imo.

Have a good night.

Blimey, this seems incredibly harsh. 

I think you're looking for something that just isn't there. 

2 minutes ago, Unan said:

No need. Most of us could get through a Pearson presser without falling asleep.

Ah, of course. 

@Silvio Dante did you do these for all of Nige's pressers? I can't recall. 

10 minutes ago, Maltshoveller said:

You can add Cadiz to that list

Now we're talking! I was there in 2010 in a little square with several hundred locals crammed around a 32 inch TV watching the world cup final - partied late into the night! 

Granada is another cracker for its gratis tapa and flamenco caverns

Over-rated. Been several times and never had a particularly good experience. 

Much better cities to visit in Spain such as Sevilla, Valencia, Madrid, San Sebastian. 

Meanwhile Inter secure the scudetto in this evenings Milan derby.

Amazing Banksy inspired tifo from Milan though...

5 hours ago, DaveInSA said:

There was an interesting LinkedIn post I came across the other day, which I will summarise as : DATA is making the world more boring.

They cited several examples, but a couple stood out. In the NBA, nearly ALL of the teams play the same way, points are scored from very specific areas of the court and it’s become dull and predictable as a result. The second was the music industry, within a given genre (pop, country etc) the diversity of music has decreased, there is less innovation and music is working to a “formula”.

What does this mean for football. Well, probably something similar isn’t it? Football is becoming dull. I’m sure that there is a multitude of reasons why, but definitely a cause will be the statistics around “most likely methods to score from” - I think that is called xG for or something.

What I’ve seen with my eyes is something completely alien to me at times. It’s structured. Ponderous. Boring. My enjoyment of football comes from chaos, a lack of structure and being able to thrive in the midst of all of this. I like passion. I like both teams going at it.

I like rugby more than football now as a spectacle. 

I like rugby too, though at this point it's probably even more data driven than football. 

Data and AI will have a big impact on football going forward. I'd imagine AI will determine a teams tactics, and they'll be less need for coaches as AI formulates bespoke training sessions that best suits players' fitness and can be tailored dependent on who their next opponent is. I expect it's already being used or trialled at some of the bigger clubs. 

9 minutes ago, kmpowell said:

My understanding is Nige wasn't put on Gardening Leave until the end of his contract, he was sacked. So, in employment law, if you sack somebody then the terms of their original contract are null & void because there isn't an employment contract bind.

Any 'notice period' payment Nige currently has will highly likely be part of a brand new compromise/settlement agreement. A compromise/settlement agreement fully supersedes any original contract of employment. It is also likely that there will be other financial benefits in return for his 'silence', although it won't be explicitly stated in that way.

Apparently he was offered a severence payment initially (post Leeds away) thought to be six months pay. But he turned it down knowing when sacked he'd get an extra month or twos pay on top of that. 

Also, is it true that Ben's mum is called Tracey, or has someone been on the wind-up? 

1 hour ago, petehinton said:

Think the latter is already planning on going back to Guernsey. 

Yes, Acey will be leaving 

Zac Bell and Ben Acey playing for Taunton last week. Another two that I doubt will make it in the pro game, certainly not Bell.

2 minutes ago, cidercity1987 said:

Il wait to see whether we get 64 points (very unlikely as that would be two wins) before commenting on regression or otherwise

Looking quite likely we'll finish 12th. That is progress, is it not?

Ultimately a league table reflects how good you are versus other clubs. 

Can't be ideal (or cheap) contracting it out, but can't be any worse than the previous regime, or the one before that. 

1 minute ago, LondonBristolian said:

Obviously not. You're making the exact point I made in my original post. But my point in my second post is that it becomes even more ridiculous when it is a player who has never played with VAR before.

The line needs to be drawn somewhere but it needs to be drawn somewhere where players can know they are in the wrong and avoid it in the future. If it was "whole body" or "most of body" in front of a player then a player could reasonably do their best to avoid having their whole body or most of their body in front of an opposition player but it is clearly unreasonable to expect a player to be wholly certain that no single aspect of their body is closer to the goal than the last opposition defender. Hence the current law becomes ridiculous and unfair once VAR is applied to it.

It's ridiculous to expect a player to know for certain whether they are in an offside position, or not, period.

For clarity, where would you draw the line? 

21 minutes ago, BCFCGav said:

Has a team in Europe’s ‘big 5’ leagues ever had an unbeaten season in every competition before? Or in any league for that matter. If they do a treble with 0 losses… wow. Just defies imagination. 

Celtic 16-17 under Brendan Rodgers were unbeaten in all domestic competitions completing the treble.

Other than that can't think of any recent examples. 

19 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

It's not about "intent" but "ability to learn and avoid".

Generally in any situation where there are rules - be it a sport, the workplace or the legal system - you can only be penalised for infringing a rule if you could have reasonably taken steps to avoid doing so. That might mean you broke it on purpose but it might also mean you were careless or negligent. Either way, you being penalised is a corrective step to discourage the rule-breaking and to encourage you to be careful and follow the rules in the future. 

If you take a foul, for example, a player might not always mean to foul a player but a player who commits a foul will always have made an error in the timing or speed of a challenge, which they can learn from in the future. Historically this has bene the case with offside too. A kid playing as a forward for the first time will regularly find themselves offside until they learn to time their runs and part of the joy of watching a quick forward - such as Michael Owen or Ian Wright - was their ability to time their run to get ahead of the defender without being offside. In training, a player would work on their timing and work out the exact moment to get forward.

However, a player on a training pitch does not have access to VAR. In fact, I'm pretty sure Haji Wright's entire experience of playing with VAR in his career before today has been one start and three sub appearances at the last World Cup and the FA Cup Quarter Final at Wolves. Whilst Wright has undoubtedly - like any other forward - worked on timing his runs in training, I do not see how he could possibly have been able to learn how to avoid being offside to the degree of fractionality that VAR picks up on. Without the ability to learn from an error, or avoid it in the future, I don't see how it is fair to penalise someone for an infringement. 

You think that by playing with VAR a player can time their movement so as to avoid being offside by a margin of a matter of centimetres? Come on. 

Again, the line needs to be drawn somewhere, doesn't it? 

I don't think "he hasn't played in games with VAR so he doesn't know if he's going to be off" really cuts the mustard as an excuse. 

This said, I'm still not a big fan of VAR. However it's here to stay so the rules and implementation of it need to improve. 

28 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

For me, it's the fact that VAR allows for a level of fussiness you (rightly) could not get with the naked eye.

Offside was ultimately created to stop players gaining an advantage by just hanging around the goal waiting to score. Pre-VAR,  a player needed to be far enough offside to gain an advantage in order for a decision to be correctly given. Otherwise the referee or assistant simply could not possibly see it, and there was a clear rule the attacking team was given the benefit of the doubt if it was not obvious.

Now you've got several minutes of studying camera angles to establish a player was marginally ahead in a way that

a) could not possibly confer an advantage to the attacking player

b) an attacking player could not be expected to notice and correct themselves against. 

 

I agree that, by the letter of the law, Haji Wright was offside. I do not believe anyone could possibly argue that Wright gained any kind of advantage by being offside or that, had he been onside, the goal would not have bene scored. I also don't think anyone could claim Wright was at fault for being offside to such a fractional degree that he could not possibly have noticed and corrected without the aid of a replay and video cameras. So what you get in practice is a player who has made no correctable error and gained no possible advantage getting penalised for an infraction that nobody could have been expected to notice without watching multiple replays of the decision.

By the letter of the law, it's the correct decision but I don't see how anyone could argue it's a decision that makes football better or a fairer game. I think the whole "a play is offside if his right testicle is fractionally ahead of the defender" is a nonsensical law, especially once you apply cameras and slow things down to check the testicular configurations. To my mind, the only way to make offside and VAR compatible with the spirit of the game is either to

a) only correct decisions that the Assistant or Referee could reasonably have spotted

b) change the law so a player's whole body needs to be ahead of the defender for an offside to occur. 

Agree with some of what you say, however a line has to be drawn somewhere regards the offside rule. 

You are bringing things like interpretation of intent by the forwards into the equation. You seem to be suggesting that if a forward tried to be onside, but then accidentally finds himself in an offside position, then that would be a reason to not be offside? That's going to create even more uncertainty and suspicion amongst fans. 

For the record, I think the offside rule should go back to there being "clean air" between defender and attacker. 

Maybe even "limbs" being offside should not count as offside. Take the line from feet. 

5 minutes ago, Henry said:

You been on a Sunday sess, Henry? 

1 minute ago, Ronnie Sinclair said:

Is there a bigger guttersnipe in football than Bruno Fernandes? 

Would absolutely love to let my hands go on him tbh 

1 minute ago, Lanterne Rouge said:

Oh joy. A Man Utd - Man City final. I can hardly wait.

Two detestable clubs.