OTHER FOOTBALL

[The Blobster]

Watching City v Arsenal, what a boring first half , seems like all I've seen is the city keeper and back line slowly walk the ball to the halfway line then turn back to the keeper and start again ! Arsenal look dangerous but can't hold any possession..

 

[Behindthegoal]

I read that de Bruyne is unhappy with all this extra stoppage time they”ll have to play, and all the Arsenal players agree with him. Poor dabs, all that extra work, and no mention of overtime pay!

Good heavens, in some EFL matches at the weekend the ball was actually in play for more than 60 minutes.
I think ALL stoppages should be accurately timed (like Rugby League for instance).
Of course, all matches should start half an hour earlier so I can still catch my regular bus home

 

[ivoralljack]

The bone idle gits are claiming the extra time will damage their health. No mention of the obscene wages they receive for cheating on the job. They are over-paid, over-privileged, self-entitled arseholes. imo, and it's time they started earning their money. They have the best medical attention at their clubs and can afford top medical private treatment if they're still worried. As far as I'm concerned, if they doubled the length of games that still wouldn't justify the disgusting amount of remuneration they receive. In these days of war, deprivation and starvation in third world countries, their pathetic bleating should fall on deaf ears. If they aren't happy with their lot then they should piss off and get a 'normal' job to see how the rest of us have to exist. But the lazy, greedy bastards won't ever do that They always want MORE. They know it and we know it.

 

[ivoralljack]

I'm really annoyed having witnessed yet again what I regard as corruption in football and blatant bias shown by officialdom to one of the top teams - and, of course, it was Man Utd AGAIN who received the benefit!!! Wolves played them at Old Trafford and absolutely battered them. At one stage the comms said that they should be 3 or 4 goals up. That they weren't is their own fault, so I'm not beefing about that. But to give you an idea, Wolves outshot them 23/15 and 6/2 on target and their XG was much higher as well.

Wolves'poor finishing is down to them but what so angered me is that, in the final minutes of added time, they hammered away at Utd who couldn't get the ball away. Then in came a cross and Onana literally wiped out their centre forward in the air, missing the ball completely - and he took out another striker as well. Gary O'Neill, Wolves manager, said in real time that it looked like the keeper almost took his man's head off and it looked equally bad on replay he thought.

Two commentators thought it was a nailed on penalty and 2 of 3 pundits in the studio, including Gary Neville, agreed. One pundit wasn't quite sure but I think that was for the purpose of balance. Whatever, you could say 4.5 of 5 thought it was a pen. So why didn't VAR sort it? That disgusting get-out, 'clear and obvious', was used as the excuse. It couldn't have been more clear and more fucking obvious. The keeper smashed the striker to the ground, nowhere near the ball, and it was the most obvious penalty there ever was, But not against Man Utd at Old Trafford it seems.

In my opinion, football is corrupt. Many officials are corrupt. The big teams benefit from decisions they have no right to because the people at the top have decided that's how it should be. The game is rotten to the core and it's about time someone with influence and a voice called the fuckers out.

 

[Behindthegoal]

If no punitive action is taken against the ref and the var then your case is proven Ivor

 

[ivoralljack]

An apology has been issued to Wolves and the 3 VAR officials have been told to step down this week. Wolves were also told that the referee should have picked it up. The media has been absolutely awash over this incident with presenters, pundits, ex-players et al, totally outraged about what has happened. But the thing is Man U have yet again got away with it. Yet again they have received the benefit of a blatantly wrong decision. Wolves should have had a penalty, should have been given the chance to earn a 1-1 draw that they absolutely deserved. These officials denied them that chance and ensured that Man U got 3 points and no amount of bans, apologies or anything else can alter that fact.

 

[ivoralljack]

Not more football but more skullduggery on a grand scale, this time in rugby. On the weekend, England captain, Owen Farrell, known for occasional bouts of thuggery, made a totally illegal, no-arms high tackle on Wales forward Taine Basham making head contact. Basham had to go off for a HIA and didn't return. The ref yellow carded Farrell, the minimum action he could take. Whilst taking his 10 minutes on the bench, a panel assessed footage of the incident (new procedure) and upgraded the yellow to a red, so that was the end of Farrell's game. A mandatory lengthy ban was very much in prospect which meant Farrell at least missing some games, if not all, in the forthcoming World Cup finals.

But guess what? A disciplinary panel exonerated Farrell and overturned the red card, which means he can now play in the World Cup. Surprise, surprise!! I kid you not, Farrell's tackle was a disgrace. I'm not being biased when I say he 100% deserved a long ban and the least he should have received was a three game ban. But no. This was England, and England's captain. They couldn't have him missing the WC could they? Yet again bias, cheating and politics have raised their ugly heads in sport and it seems nothing will ever be done about it. We fans just have to suck it up.

 

[ivoralljack]

The debate about that penalty has raged on Talk Sport all day on different programmes and they're now having a phone-in about it. A former top level footballer is co-presenting the show presently on air (Darren Bent?) and he was asked his opinion about the incident. Penalty all day long was his reply and he totally failed to understand why it wasn't awarded. (a caller just said that he thought it wasn't a penalty....... it was GBH! ).

Bent was then asked had it been Man U claiming the penalty, would it have been awarded to them? His reply was a resounding YES. He was then asked, in his long experience, were bigger teams favoured by referees, officials and the authorities. Again his reply was an unequivocal YES.

This is damning beyond belief. In other words, some of the people who run our game and some of the people who are supposed to police it on the field are CORRUPT CHEATS. There is NO OTHER INTERPRETATION that can be put on this. We also know that Wolves manager O'Neill was booked for showing petulance, yet this booking has not been overturned by the authorites despite the fact that his protests were entirely valid as his team had been blatantly cheated.

We go on about players cheating on the field and gambling etc but how are they supposed to behave any differently when they know that cheating and corruption exists in the very fabric of the game FROM THE TOP DOWN? It's about time there was a purge of these cheats. Wholesale sackings should be the order of the day and jail sentences handed out where appropriate. Draconian? Not at all. Many fans like a bet on a football match - you've all seen the adverts from Bet 365, Paddy Power, Ladbrokes and others ad nauseum. But with referees and VAR officials making decisions as bent as a two bob note, decisions that influence results, how has the punter got an honest chance of winning? Get it sorted out NOW!!

 

[CroJack]

Watch Plymouth v Soton. Soton have not created much so far. Tella scored for them with a screamer from over 20 yards. Plymouth threatening on the counter. Whittaker assisted the Plymouth goal. Cundle disappointing today. Spoiling almost every Plymouth attack and deservedly substituted in the 60th minute. Soton have an excellent attack (Edozie, Che Adams, and Tella) but their defence is all over the place. Does this sound familiar?

 

[ivoralljack]

Soton with late goal from Che Adams.

 

[CroJack]

Soton have some real quality in their squad and if they don't lose Che Adamas they will be in the mix for automatic promotion.

 

[ivoralljack]

You can watch Wales lose to South Korea tonight on Viaplay, kickoff 19:45. The game is also live on S4C with highlights (Korean goals) on BBC Wales later tonight. With 1 win in the last 12 games how Page remains in the job is totally beyond my comprehension. The FAW praised him for getting us to the WC finals without so much as one word of condemnation about our subsequent shameful performances that were nothing short of embarrassing. In my opinion the man is not fit for purpose and I would love to see what a proper manager could make of the job.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

Cabango made it to the bench. Cooper and Cullen in the stands. Waste of time. They'd be better off, as would we, with Cooper and Cullen at least being part of the integration and preparation for the Cardiff match.

 

[ivoralljack]

No score draw with, imo, Wales having slightly the better of the game. We always seemed comfortable and had a couple of decent chances with no particular threat to our goal. Not the strongest opposition but a good run out for the players.

 

[ivoralljack]

RIP, Brayley Reynolds, ex-Swan and Cardiff (we'll forgive him for that) player who hailed from near Blackwood. Brayley formed a lethal partnership with ex Manchester United player, Colin Webster scoring many goals between them (I think Brayley got 150 league goals in total). They were certainly the dirtiest pair of strikers I've ever seen, both being highly skilled practitioners of the dark arts despite being well under 6 ft tall - Colin Webster actually laid out an opposing defender playing for United in a Wembley cup final and the ball was nowhere near either of them at the time!! And I well remember both of them contriving to take out a referee by pretending their focus was on a high dropping ball then taking out the ref in a scissors move. Any one of them on his own was a real nasty handful; the both of them playing together should have carried a health warning. They took no prisoners!

But Brayley could play as well, as his goal tally showed, and he was regarded as one of the best ever uncapped Welsh players. One of the most exciting games I ever saw was when we played a second division match against Liverpool, who were promoted that year, at the Vetch. We were 0-2 down, then 1-3 then 2-4 before dragging the score back to 4-4. By then Brayley had a bad leg injury and was forced to hobble about on the right wing as there were no subs in those days. The game was coming to a close and we were attacking the Double Decker end. Brayley had the ball wide on the right about midway in the Liverpool half. He couldn't run so he hooked the ball towards their goal. The ball landed on the six yard line level with the far post and was going wide but it must have hit a divot on the bumpy, muddy pitch and turned like an off-break inside the post giving us a 5-4 win! Fantastic!!

So many memories of Brayley when I was growing up. RIP, mate, and thank you.

 

[ivoralljack]

The game above was played on 3 October 1959 attendance 17,187. The scorers were Brayley Reynolds (2), Colin Webster, Len Allchurch and Reg Davies, Welsh international, who came to us from Newcastle as part of the Ivor deal. Colin Webster finished the season with 22 league goals whilst Brayley netted 16. They scored one and two goals respectively in other competitions.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

How did Ramsay perform against the Koreans?

 

[ivoralljack]

Came on as a sub. Was unlucky not to get on the end of Moore's header that came off a post; other than that had an average game - wasn't great but wasn't poor either.

 

[ivoralljack]

Wales play Latvia tonight, kickoff at 19:45 the game live on S4C with later highlights on BBC Wales.

I see that manager Robert Page is adamant that he wants to see out his contract. I bet he does! Any manager with a record of just one win in 13 games would have been sacked by now. The only success he enjoyed was on the back of Gareth Bale and the entire football world knows that. Once Bale finished Page was finished but the gormless twats at the FAW had been suckered into giving him a 4 year contract and now it's too expensive to be rid of him, which is what he deserves.

He won't resign. He says that he loves the challenge and loves working with the players. Really? That should read: I have a highly paid, high profile job and I know that, if I resign, I'll be fcuking lucky to get another job in football at any level!! His double talk is on par with Jordan Henderson saying that he's only playing in Saudi to advance the standard of football there and maybe make a difference to their attitude on gay rights. Nothing to do with a long contract on £700k a week then?

We all know them for what they are, so I just wish these people would keep their traps shut and stop taking us for fools.

 

[Yankee_Jack]