The guy is still young and I’d say no one really reaches players like Messi and Ronaldo. M’bappe could definitely put up better numbers, but he’s still got time and he has won almost everything granted it’s a team game.

I think his main mistake was caving to PSG and not moving on, he clearly wanted to go to Madrid and is just playing for PSG for the sake of promises he was made. I’m not saying he’s half assing it but you put in nowhere near the same effort mentally when you don’t really care about where you’re at.

Statistically though it does technically reduce the mistakes, the issue is that they even still make them and in many of those cases they weren’t even on subjective ones.

My personal hangup with VAR is around the rule that contact = foul and if they show a freeze frame or a slow mo, it removes the context altogether.

I don’t think anything will ever stop people not liking decisions or consistency because there will always be subjective ones and people will always remember the bad ones especially against their own teams. But again that happened with general refereeing, people remember the hand of god, the Lampard goal against Germany and the Henry handball against Ireland. VAR would arguably have caught all those.

I think someone will catch them someday, I don’t see it being in my lifetime though. If you had asked me a few years back I’d have said sure City could have had a monopoly on it, but in that time Madrid have still won it and a team pretty dominant in their own region have only just got their first one.

I do think it is easier for teams to try and catch Madrid than it was under the old format but they still have to get through knockout games and a one off final which is never as easy as it looks on paper.

It is kind of funny to me, people talk about letting the officials officiate the game… they still are but they’re still getting it wrong with VAR and it is hardly the systems fault that someone looks at a foul or an offside and still doesn’t get it right. Going back doesn’t change much, people will still not like referees decisions and they will still cost teams dearly.

I think the concept of VAR actually never has been the real issue, the three issues are the officiating, the rules being so open to interpretation, and the players or teams constantly looking for fouls or begging for everything to get checked.

It just leads to everything getting stopped and delayed for the smallest matters even though it was entirely meant to only iron out major issues. The officiating not getting the major issues correct then belatedly apologising isn’t a fault of the system and never has been. The system for the most part captures exactly what it is meant to, every mistake is some numpty doing their job wrong.

On current form sure, but they’re not too dissimilar to us. There are a lot of games that could go either way, in United’s case we’ve been unlucky to lose some and very lucky to win others. Chelsea have had some decent enough chances and just not clicked, in saying that they have a newish manager and a young team so I’d not be that worried about this season.

It’s thanks to Emery, they always had decent players and money which I’m sure was part of the draw. I feel like he had a bit of a raw deal at Arsenal, I don’t really think Arteta is leaps and bounds ahead of Emery, but the timing and backing worked out far better. He has always done well with this kind of team, Arsenal and PSG were arguably his low points.

They broke the rules but they’ll also get a heavier punishment and the irony is that you could shave 10 points off City and they would probably still be right up there at the very worst, hell they’d probably win the thing still. But Everton getting points deducted after their hard work and after the last couple seasons? I think it’s skewed.

We have had a ton, but Falcao is the one that sticks out for me. At that time, he was easily one of the top strikers in the world. It’s not really his fault, though. Injuries really changed the middle of his career.

In general Chelsea always had signings I got hyped just to see and they all kind of underwhelmed me granted some were closer to the end of their peak. Players like Shevchenko, Crespo and Eto’o… hell I was even hyped to see Kezman because he had insane numbers in the Dutch league.

I’m Northern Irish and love seeing my national team, I think people find internationals boring because the draws are so skewed, making them almost not worth watching if your team is any good. Where we are seeded tends to get us drawn with one, if not two good teams per qualifying group.

The main thing that bugs me about our international breaks is that the national teams’ games aren’t broadcast free like the England games. Ours are on Sky if we’re lucky, even the South have their on RTE.

I don’t think he should be fired for several reasons, we have already tried multiple high profile and even non high profile managers and this has been the theme. Why would another one change that? The most time they gave to any of them was arguably the least experienced manager. Who realistically do you think is available who is substantially better AND would take the role? The list wouldn’t be as great as people seem to think it would be.

It is only the start of the second season, and we’ve been hit with crucial injuries and scandals. I won’t deny he has made some odd comments or subsistutions, but a lot of it is either in hindsight or it is clear there’s an internal issue at the club.

Losing to City isn’t any kind of benchmark, they have been coached for years under Pep and I remember in the first season Pep was there, people were doubting him at that time. People are just insanely impatient, imagine Liverpool or City fired their managers based on a set of fans or pundits reactions. Hell, last season people were hyping EtH for what he did.

The board issue doesn’t help either, it looks like the club will be further leached off of for the foreseeable future. The club really needed to be sold and the Glazers needed to be gone, no manager has freedom and every decision will be influenced by accountants and marketing guys.