Thing is I’m not sure you can quantify it as corruption when these things seem to be falling for/against teams seemingly at random.

Like we’ve had situations where we got lucky, we’ve also had situations like the Mac Allister red card that went against us.

Arsenal have had stuff for and against, as have city.

If there’s corruption, I’m not sure who it’s in favour of? It just seems like rampant incompetence.

Well VVD got an extra game for a similar interaction so let’s see some consistency there I guess.

Also Haaland’s tweet won’t win him any favours either.

Ah just in time for some new manager bounce against us. What a time to be alive.

My only thought is he assumed Grealish was off so blew the whistle as the advantage was gone?

Still in this technology era I don’t see the harm in letting something that close roll to its conclusion and then sorting the potential offside after?

Not really sure they do. He wasn’t better than Modric or Kroos when they sold him and he isn’t better than Valverde or Bellingham now.

Madrid have sold of loads of very high quality players in the past, players that would be stars at other clubs are regularly deemed surplus to requirements there. The bar they have for who makes it there is probably higher than any other club in the world.

Given how long they’ve taken in the past to replace Giggs/Scholes/Carrick and then later Mctom/Fred etc I highly doubt that unless he is pressing to leave, they’ll be giving up on him anytime soon.

I’m pretty sure Pep has talked on multiple occasions about why having talented dribblers is as important to his setup as many other attacking strengths.

IIRC one of the major reasons for buying Grealish at a time when Sterling was amongst the goals quite a lot was because he was the better dribbler and more successful against more defensive teams.

We all know once it’s released to “all victims of the war” a token amount might go to a charity for Ukraine but the vast majority will go to some dodgy charity for the Russian war dead that will magically disappear into the exact pockets this whole process was meant to starve.

Smaller teams tend to play a low block which Chelsea have time and again proven they have nothing to get past.

Bigger teams generally play more attacking, with higher lines, which is generally more favourable for the few attacking strengths Chelsea have.

Another reason that Ange deciding to just stick with a high line against them is more perplexing. The probably could have gotten a point or better had they adapted post red card, instead of”sticking to his principles” wasn’t giving them the best chance of a result in the game.

More and more I feel like punditry is a young man’s game. When they were freshly retired Carra and Neville were pretty good but now we’re almost ten years on and they seem to be slipping more and more into the “games gone, back in my day was better” cliche.

Conversely I think that some of the punditry/analysis work Sturridge has been doing has been really good.

I guess the further you get away from the “modern game” the less insightful your insight actually is.

We asked the Netherlands to allow a 21 year old to skip U-21 international duty after he’d moved to his third country in 2 years so he could do stuff like, y’know, find somewhere to live and they threw a right hissy fit and banned him from playing for them for 4 months.

International teams are almost universally run by absolute dickheads who if they had the talent required would drop it in a heartbeat to go back to managing/running a club.

13-7 is interesting.

We can pretty much assume that City, Chelsea and Newcastle voted against.

Would also assume with United’s incoming owner also having ownership of Nice they probably voted against.

Still leaves 3 “against” clubs who are unknown.

I know FSG have looked at buying other clubs but haven’t as of yet, given the ban was temporary I don’t see any benefit for us to vote against.

Personally I think it’s a crap idea because:

• adding more complexity to the rule that’s already so hotly contested is a recipe for disaster. As it stands it’s easier to decipher if someone is on/off compared to this new rule.

• the main issue many have with the current rule and how VAR is used (extremely marginal offsides) will still remain, regardless of where the line is, there will always be situations where people will be narrowly offside. All this does is move the same issue 2 feet up the pitch.

• it will encourage deep block, defensive, crap to watch football. Such an overwhelming advantage to an attacker (who are generally already quicker than defenders anyway) will lead to teams further reducing any space in behind them and sitting deeper on the field to prevent the chance of a runner behind them.

This sounds very La Liga and a wonderful way to kill off what’s left of the competitiveness of the league.

I think the rule is fine as it is.

Any introduction of “daylight” or any other sort of muddying of the water will lead to more issues than it would fix.

Wouldn’t surprise me if instead of

“Wow if the Ev got 10 points deducted for their breach of ffp that sets quite a precedent for when city get all theirs”

It’ll be

“Oh so a 10 point deduction across one season is just the new default punishment”

Every club does this. Pretty sure most of the minor 1-2 week injuries that occur the week of an international break are bogus or something a player would have played through at club level.

Then again who can blame clubs when international setups don’t give a fuck about long term player health and the league does nothing to try and help teams with players out on international games.

Just businessmen doing business. Nothing odd to see here at all.

To be fair we had to because the defence was still a total shambles at that point. No VVD until January and no Alisson either.

Exact same happened to us, we played more attacking and generally better football the year we won the UCL compared to a more controlled style when we won the league the following year.