Deano6

Say what you want about him, but that backheel for the 6th goal was world class. If Neymar had done that everyone would be creaming themselves. The way he turned the other way as he was doing it completely disguised the direction of the ball.

Quiet in Bermuda is it? Never mind, Cup Match will be around soon enough.

Steven Davis for me. Can't believe this thread has been derailed so quickly into transfer news on Clyne. Stay on topic please people!

Give over pal, we all know that guy is i.e. you!

Why wouldn't they be squeezing their suppliers to **** already to generate highest profits possible? I'd be p1ssed if I were an Apple shareholder (full disclosure: I am not) and they have expense leakage that they could be addressing that quickly and easily.

Danny Rose is not number 5 on the list. Marcelo is. Rose does not appear on the list at all. Sorry. Number 7.

Danny Rose number 5.

jawillwill was never heard from again...

Really Whitey? You can't see why the ability to watch an incident a couple of times over is better than seeing it once? Or that seeing it from an angle that is less obscured, or might have happened behind you, could be a better view than from a single pair of eyes? That zoom/slow-motion wouldn't be of value here... http://zippy.gfycat.com/CalmWelloffAstarte.webm Refs are good, but they're not infallible!

As opposed to you who keeps repeating that you have proven that it wouldn't work while ignoring evidence to the contrary... I've just given you one simple example of why it doesn't work, to make it easiest to understand. I can give more examples if you want? Cricket/NFL/Tennis all have very consistent, very regular, fairly prolonged stops in play that football doesn't. That's why it works and is used for them and it's not used for football. Since you haven't actually provided any new information in this post, you're just stubbornly clinging to a prior point, I'll indulge you and look at your killer claim that proves it won't work... Well, Sour Mash my friend, what would happen is that after the ball goes in the net, the play would be reviewed. If a penalty should have been awarded in the build-up the play goes back to that incident and the penalty is taken and the game continues from there. If a penalty shouldn't have been awarded then there is nothing wrong with the goal scored and it stands. Nothing in there suggests that it "doesn't work". Unless by "doesn't work" you mean you don't like it, or that the game would have a considerably new element from how it is now. Both of which are valid objections, and if it is unpopular enough idea then perhaps we shouldn't implement it. But that requires discussion and debate, and from the reactions above I think there is a fair amount of diversity in views on where it should end up. By claiming it "doesn't work" you are trying to have your cake and eat it by shutting down any need for discussion - unfortunately you're going to have to work harder than that and join the debate as people aren't buying it. Maybe you should provide more examples, provided they are better than this one. I also note that you have raised a few times that there is a problem of managers throwing appeals while the game is going on in the last minute to break up an attack. That is a very well made point, and I agree with you. The only thing is I didn't see anyone advocating for that. I saw two options put forward: (1) Next natural break in play either the ref decides for himself it should be reviewed, or you could give the managers a chance to appeal (2) An independent person (4th / 5th official?) reviews as the game goes on and alerts the ref to stop the game if he thinks something should be awarded They are both interesting ideas. Both have pros and cons, but so does the current status quo which surely has the greatest scope for errors (none are completely error free). The second of these has a certain appeal as it doesn't really feel any different to a linesman flagging for an offence while the game continues, although there is scope for considerably longer delays. The first one finds a natural break in play and allows longer to make decisions, but has the disadvantage of possibly being considerably delayed and leads to more time stopped (though not necessarily any longer than an injury would). Both have the advantage over the status quo of leading to more correct decisions. So it's a balance - everyone will have their views and different people will prioritise different things. It seems like you value a continual game with decisions made on the spot, and are prepared to sacrifice more correct decisions to achieve that. Others may see it differently. By the way, I don't mean to make this personal. I am enjoying your contributions to this thread, and you're almost single-handedly keeping it going. You've made me think more about it than I had before, and I may even come over to your side of the debate by the end as I've thought of a few more scenarios that make it tricky (though not unworkable) - not least the situation where the ball ends up in the same net.

I don't see that you've explained why it doesn't work. You've just said it would be different to how it is now. The same complaint could have been lodged by cricket fans about reviewing the award of a wicket (run-out / LBW). Or by tennis fans. Or NFL fans. In terms of fans reactions, I think you're underestimating the fans' ability to adapt to an evolution of the game, which is by its nature just an arbitrary set of rules in any case. Currently, it might go a little something like this: "Get in - we've scorred. Yeeeeesssss! Get in. You lot over there are all sh*tters and sh*g your mothers!!! ...oh bugger, it's been disallowed for offside / handball / a foul in the buildup" In the new world it might go something like: "Get in - we've scorred. Yeeeeesssss! Get in. You lot over there are all sh*tters and sh*g your mothers!!! ...oh bugger, it's being reviewed for an earlier incident [switch to cricket/tennis/NFL mode to find out the outcome] ...yesssss / noooooooo" It's not like the fans wouldn't be aware something controversial had happened shortly before. In fact the ref could even indicate that he's going to review something with an arm gesture so everyone knows to expect it. Would simply add to the jeopardy! Now you very well might not like that (I will bet money you don't), but it doesn't mean it doesn't work. The fact the ball ended up in the other net is really of no consequence to the process, so to suggest it causes the whole system to melt down is a fallacy (as opposed to certain individual fans who I'm sure will have a meltdown!). In fact of more danger to the review system would be if the ball ends up in the same net. That would need some thought - would the attacking team automatically get the benefit of the advantage played, or would there be a mandatory review? If the latter then a team may be waiting to hear if their goal stands or if they need to take a penalty, which would hinge on whether they were fouled in the build-up!

You need to try clicking on a few more headings, the rating is not the same across all categories at all, and the data is sortable on every different stat, home and away and overall. For a start he is better away than home (a bit). Try looking at assists (we know he is 2nd there) and key passes, but overall. Anyway I am no fan of these stats, but if they are of any use they do indicate how ineffective the boy is (currently), ranking well below Steven Davis, for instance, who many like to criticise. Are you sure that's right Vectis? You sound very confident so I've spent the last few minutes going click-happy trying to prove myself wrong, but I keep finding that everyone has the same rating across Defensive, Offensive and Passing. JWP for example is 6.65. I see that it does change between Home and Away (6.70 and 6.61 respectively for JWP), but that wasn't what we were talking about - you said he ranked higher defensively than offensively. Of course you could pick on individual stats and those would give completely different ranking depending what you chose (for a start, height and weight are listed there!), but we were taking about the "Rating", which is a composite score.

That's a very extreme situation that happens basically never. And if it does, well f**k 'em. If fans got a sniff that running on the pitch could change an outcome of a game there would be carnage!

So what if it does? Fans thought their team had scored but they hadn't. Happens all the time. If you want to score legitimately then just don't cause an infringement in the build-up. I don't see why fans behaviour should determine the result of a match.

The rating is the same across all categories, so won't change by screen (he is 16th in both). Otherwise Fraser Forster is ranked higher than him offensively.

What do you mean by he'd "get it"? All he's doing is stating the fact that JWP got a straight red card for denying a goalscoring opportunity (which was in response to someone asking if it was 2 yellows). He didn't say he agreed with the decision.

Strawberries aren't berries, you idiot! Berries are fleshy fruit formed from a flower with only one ovary. Strawberries are an "aggregate fruit" formed from a flower with many overies - hence the multiple seeds on the outside! Bananas are berries though - if you throw one of those you'd be fine.

I hope they're planning to win the bloody thing, not just get there and be also-rans! I'll be devastated if we do all the hard work to get there and then get knocked out in, say, the quarter-finals.

T-shirt cannons!

Don't forget: "The whole stadium sings with us!"

I think the tribal aspect got watered down when people stopped living in tribes and actually started moving around a bit and met people from other parts of the country. It's harder to go to war with your enemy when they sit in the cube next to you at work.

team that has won its last 4 games doing better than us shocker.

What's everyone's views on our performance in the first half of the season v second half (15 games in to the latter)? My sense is that we have trailed off a little from the first half (obvious when you see the teams that have caught us, but I'm thinking more of the ****ty points dropped in games), but that it is in comparison to a pretty phenomenal first half of the season when we practically beat everyone that we were 'expected' to. But then I have to square that away with the fact that we have had terrific performances against the better teams in the second half, when we couldn't get any love from them at the start of the season. So I decided to look into it and pull out some statistics. Yes - I know all statistics are made up and can't tell you anything ever, but all I'm doing is counting so settle down! I got hold of our points (per game, to make it comparable given different numbers of games played), goals for and goals against in the first and second halves of the season. I also split it out between "top 6" teams and "the rest". Some things that struck me: I was surpised to see that our Points Per Game is almost identical over both halves of the season, so there's not really been a slowdown since Christmas (around 1.7 ppg). However there's been a pretty obvious split between results against the top teams and the rest... In first half of the season we averaged 2.5 points per game against the non-Top 6 teams. That is unbelievably good. I would be surprised if even Chelsea and Man City would boast those figures. It's highly unreasonable to expect to sustain that over a season. That's then coupled with only getting the one point from Chelsea out of the Top 6 in the first half. And that came around Christmas (I was there, Hi Mum!), so basically right at the halfway point in the season. In the second half of the season, our performances against Top 6 and the rest have been pretty similar. In fact if we had gone on to beat Spurs yesterday, we would be averaging more from Top 6 than the rest. (I know you can't pick and choose results to have gone differently, but I just did!) The 1.7 points per game against other teams still looks pretty good overall for the league, but it doesn't feel like the kind of form that gets you into the Top 6 (I don't have data on other teams, but would be an interesting comparison). Looking at goals scored, it's a very similar story. Few goals v Top 6 in first half of the season vs many against rest (of course there's 8 v Sunderland, but even without it would look healthy). As we have all been v aware of, the goals have dried up to some extent in the second half - especially in that awful spell between Swansea and Palace. Perhaps an interesting observation in the second half is that we have scored MORE goals in games against Top 6 teams than the rest. Is this evidence of the other teams "shutting up shop" against us, while the Top 6 play their own game? However the surprise of the day for me is that despite how much our defence was lauded in the first half of the season for conceding so few goals, we have actually conceded LESS goals in the second half of the season (0.7 vs 0.8 goals per game). While there has been a small uptick in the games against the lower teams, we have really shut up shop in games against the Top 6. Although we still have Man City to play, so maybe they'll see us right by the end! Anything else come out of this, for those with an analytical mind? What would be interesting for me is to see comparable stats for other teams, particularly those around us. I have neither the time nor inclination to go further, but maybe a future blog for Redslo to pursue!

I guess Tadic did one v Sunderland when Mannone was caught in no man's land too. So we haven't scored any goals in the Prem this season from outside the box when the keeper hasn't been massively out of position (Arsenal / Sunderland / Hull)? Is that normal for us?

I'm forever blowing bubbles was originally about sucking off a chimp. Blue Moon was originally about an icy, barenaked arse. Doesn't stop them having been 'claimed' and co-opted by Hammers and City.