Coventry … do or die last 30

As I write the match is tied on a superbly taken penalty … come on City.

united looking knackered. Coventry full of championship vim and vigor

From 3-0 down to 3-3 after full time. A catastrophic collapse or calamitous come-back? Coventry owning the the last 30 minutes of the match playing terrific football.

3-3 with 15 minutes left to play.

Ffs … var decision. Denied a winner for City, crap call.

Top, top performance by Coventry. Unlucky by a fraction not to win it in extra time. Finally undone by a penalty save and a miss.

Hate the way VAR offside is called. It's against the spirit of the original rule and ridiculously fussy. The offside rule is meant to prevent an unfair advantage. Today, Wright was an inch further forward than a defender who was 20 yards away. In no way was that inch conferring any advantage whatsoever.

For me, change the offside rule.

Make it so there has to be clear daylight between the defender and attacker instead of this awkward "in-line" nonsense which is difficult to implement, since we're judging limbed bipedal animals in motion, not sliding blocks of wood with nice clear edges.

Sure, there will still be the occasional fussy line-drawing in certain cases, but much less overall.

Coventry were robbed, that comeback and final goal deserved a victory.

Typical Man Utd luck. I'm sickened by it and have been for years. If there's a break to be had, they get it; if a ref is biased, they get it. And it all started with so-called "Fergie Time" when for some reason the powers-that-be in the FA shat themselves whenever he looked at them and incessantly danced to his tune. Hope Citeh absolutely slaughter them in the final.

Yankee_Jack said:

Finally undone by a penalty save and a miss.

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That's their fault. You should always at least hit the target with a pen and, as for the saved one, you all know what I think of low-struck penalties. In today's football that always means a 50/50 chance of the kick being saved if the keeper can guess correctly. A pen should at least be 70/30 to the taker. And if they are hit like Grimes did his last one it's 100/fcuk all chance.

jackodiamonds said:

Hate the way VAR offside is called. It's against the spirit of the original rule and ridiculously fussy. The offside rule is meant to prevent an unfair advantage. Today, Wright was an inch further forward than a defender who was 20 yards away. In no way was that inch conferring any advantage whatsoever.

…For me, change the offside rule….

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The original, and to my mind still valid, rule is that onside requires two defenders between an attacking player and the bye-line when the ball is played unless inside their own half or last played by a defender, or the player is behind the ball. The operating word is “between”, so in-line is offside. And the “player” doesn’t have to be the one receiving the ball, just deemed not interfering (which gets back to the infamous quote that if you’re not interfering then what are your doing on the field). This in-line nonsense is just that … exactly what flap of skin or clothing at we talking about. The game is meant to be officiated by humans and if humans cannot make these differentiations and discriminations in real time of their own accord then wtf are we talking about.

Another current bad habit I dislike intensely is the delayed linesman flagging of offside. When you see it flag it and let the referee do his job and make a decision. When the play that is ultimately going to result in an offside decision is allowed to continue you risk player injury as the players should be playing to the whistle and busting a gut accordingly. Why allow that to happen.

There's a radio ad skit about VAR disallowing a goal because a nasal hair was offside. That amused me but, in retrospect, it isn't funny because that sort of decision makes a mockery of the spirit of the game. VAR can be a good thing if it was used and applied with common sense and, imho, the best way to do that is to have ONE deciding factor to determine offside or not. As far as I'm concerned that should be the foot. The game after all is called football and just the one line would need to be drawn establishing the position of the feet of those involved. We can dispense with arms, shoulders, heads, knees, warts on knobs and indeed the said nasal hairs. It would simplify the rule and the game. Common sense to me but when was that ever used by the footballing authorities?