But Martinelli and Madueke make the bench. Not a surprise as they trained once before Sunderland.
Hopefully this is the start of some better luck.....
Michael Oliver, do your worst :-(
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But Martinelli and Madueke make the bench. Not a surprise as they trained once before Sunderland.
Hopefully this is the start of some better luck.....
Michael Oliver, do your worst :-(
He ref?s 4 games of ours last season, 2 wins and 2 draws, and given that they are likely to have been strong opponents that sounds reasonable, PeterQuote:
Originally Posted by Peter
And 2 red cards. So we have a 50% chance of a sending off and 50% chance of drawing.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Based on your very small sample size :-)
More importantly, Spurs look much more committed and better organised than I have seen them for some time :-(Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
More defensive but I'm not sure it is really working. We are playing well and they are surrendering so much ground.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Ooh, we've scored:-)
And again :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Who was it questioning Eze? :hehe:
Ooh, we've scored again :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Spurs will switch to back four second half. This game will get tougher.
Very good first half.
I'm so glad we don't switch to back five for games. I think it is really difficult to switch between the two. This has been a disaster for spurs.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Excellent. I like the fact that VAR seemed to go for an early half-time pint there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Not that much harder :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Early doors, Wes. Long way to go here....Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Does Timber ever lose a 1v1?Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
Quite the half from him
That aged well, thankfully.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Pains me to say it but thought the officials all had a good game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
MO held back on the cards, for both sides. Kept it flowing most of the time. He had a public 'quiet word' with Spurs captain in the first half about the obvious delaying tactics. And when he found himself in Leo's way at one point he went to him after and had a quick almost handshake. I was fully expecting a red card ahead of Chelsea. A lesser ref could easily have given one to Declan.Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
Very surprised second goal wasn't VAR checked, we had three players in an offside position all near the 'keeper.
None in line of sight though. Even Vicario didn't moan about it after the match.....they have bigger problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by pjlincs
As soon as we scored they completely fell apart, defensively.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult
Shame :-)
Peter's paranoia aside, he's one of the better ones around, even if we did get a couple of dodgy decisions from him last season.Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
He really, really isnt, and it isnt just last season. The guy is a grade A ****. That ridiculous game against City a few years back where he let Rodri kick everything that moved and then sent off Gabriel for a swear word and a minor foul.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
The double yellow card for Martinelli......
He's got more form than Norman Stanley Fletcher....
I tend to agree with you but he's no Anthony Taylor. Most overrated ref of all timeQuote:
Originally Posted by Peter
The best way to judge a referee is to watch him in a game you don't give a toss about. And when I watch Oliver in those games he seems to be one of the better refs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
The Martinelli sending off was madness but even the good ones make the odd mistake.
And as PRSB says, he was good yesterday, I barely noticed the officials.
It isn't the odd mistake. Leaving aside the two last season, there is the Martinelli one, and that City game was the perfect exampel of two-tier refereeing. Each individual decision could just about be defended, but when you look at them together it is as clear as day that there are two sets of rule. The proof- after 19 fouls in the game he finally booked two City players following their injury time winner, for over celebrating. Utter ****er.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
However, yesterday showed that he was out to disprove all of this. Perfect example- the Declan Rice booking. That challenge was as nailed on a yellow card as you could ever see. He was going to let it go until the Spurs players kicked off, and then changed his mind.
Just think about that. He changed his mind because the opposition moaned...... and he was totally in the wrong to begin with. Two mistakes in one- a 'Martinelli' if you like :-)
He's been effectively banned from refereeing us since the MLS incident. This was him worming his way back in. He will referee our game at the Etihad later in the season..... I'd put money on it.
You could argue that one of them was in his line of sight, but so was the defender. You can't block a view that is already blocked.Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
Liverpool fans are furious after he disallowed their goal at City the other week :-)
Nope. They were all over the place from the start. Lucky not to be a goal down after 3 minutes. They were totally unprepared for that system and it wasn't working from the first minute. We were all over them and they couldn't get up to the pitch at all. You could see Romero screaming at the players ahead of him and telling them where to be. They were getting pulled out of position and leaving huge gaps ahead of the defence.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Bad, bad idea, particularly off the back of an international break with less time to prepare. It is the wrong way to block us. Filling the centre doesn't solve the problem. The teams who have success against us drop their wide players back to double up.
So much for Frank being a tactical genius. The moment I saw their line up I was delighted :-)
We have a fair bit of history with that ******* as well :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
I think the issue with Oliver is his 'mistakes' have been so egregious. The double yellow, the MLS red.... those stand alone as absolute stinkers, not regular errors in any sense of the word. You could rerun those incidents 100 times with a 100 different refs and you wouldn't get a single red card from them.
He moaned his arse off at the time. He?s hardly going to moan post match after shipping four. is he :hehe:Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
He did mention it, but to be fair he said it doesn't really matter given that they had their arses handed to them for 90 minutes :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by 7sisters
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
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 :-)
Think I?d have felt a bit aggrieved had the boot been in the other foot. I guess the ref owed us that one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
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.
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.....Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
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 :-)
I wasn't having a go at you, WES :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
And as Gary Neville said, did he really think that long balls were going to give us a problem?