As expected, none of the forwards are back in the XI

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Originally Posted by WES

I thought he booked Rice and the Spurs player for the afters after the foul - which I agree was a nailed on yellow. I don't think he was booked for the initial foul.

Oliver has ref'd 2 FA Cup finals, the knocklout stages of the CL and in the WC. It suggests he's not that bad, Peter.

Save your ire for Mike Riley :-)

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If he booked Rice for the afters then it should have been two yellows. Whatever way you slice it, he got that badly wrong. And I know why.....

I am not saying he is a bad referee. I am saying he is a bent one.

I watched him ref the Liverpool and United game. He was absolutely fine.

Just look at his overall record of reffing us and City. And then his record in games between us.

Anthony Taylor is just a bad referee.

And as for your list of the big games he has refereed...... look at how many of those games Mike Riley did. Or Graham Poll. Totally self defeating argument :-)

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Originally Posted by WES

I thought they were pretty solid for the first 30 min or so. Very committed and physical. Other than the Rice volley I don't recall a decent chance in the first 30 min.

I made no comment on the overall strategy and their inability to get up the pitch. I've seen us lose to teams that spent the first half entirely in their half too many times to see that as a flawed strategy.

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I wasn't having a go at you, WES :-)

To be fair, we were also excellent yesterday. We could have had a bad day and Frank might have been labelled a tactical genius.

Maybe the extra day helped but we had a pace in our game that seemed to be lacking in the Saturday matches. Really impressive after an international break.

And there were several examples of how the pace of a pass can cause problems and move people around. This is much more positive and aggressive football than we were seeing in the early games. This is true Arteta football.

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Originally Posted by Peter

I wasn't having a go at you, WES :-)

To be fair, we were also excellent yesterday. We could have had a bad day and Frank might have been labelled a tactical genius.

Maybe the extra day helped but we had a pace in our game that seemed to be lacking in the Saturday matches. Really impressive after an international break.

And there were several examples of how the pace of a pass can cause problems and move people around. This is much more positive and aggressive football than we were seeing in the early games. This is true Arteta football.

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I just couldn't believe how negatively he set them up! Asking for trouble. I'm not big on XG and the like but 0.07 shows how poor they were.

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Originally Posted by PSRB

I just couldn't believe how negatively he set them up! Asking for trouble. I'm not big on XG and the like but 0.07 shows how poor they were.

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I think that might not have been deliberate. It can happen when you put in a back five with a side that are not used to it, and preach caution.

And as Gary Neville said, did he really think that long balls were going to give us a problem?