Football: We'll be here until we get the draw we want!

[Spockydog]

4 hours ago, Raja said:

He's going to be mega expensive though. And injured a fair amount, or maybe I am being unfair?

According to Ornstein, Josh Kroenke has said the plan is to use our spending power to supplement our squad of superstars-in-waiting by making at least one marquee signing per window. Considering that none of our new signings are on mega money, we have considerable scope in our wage budget. More so if we can get Auba out the door in January.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Still, it ain't the same game bro. The wild west is live state side, even when you're not in a place called Vice City. 

Also, @A Horse Named Stranger was deeply traumatized by the repeated use of "beating a dead horse," so maybe we shouldn't use his kind as a whipping boy right now.

Instead you draw me into this dscussion of Real Men leave their sports with brain injuries and commit suicide in a couple of years. How considerate.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Instead you draw me into this dscussion of Real Men leave their sports with brain injuries and commit suicide in a couple of years. How considerate.

Lol, there's a wide gap between that and faking injuries to draw a penalty. I don't think anyone is arguing you should go back out and play after suffering a concussion, but likewise I would not support anyone pretending to be hurt to gain an advantage. There's nothing sporting about that.

[lacuna]

Play fakes in handegg are deplorable. No real badass has to resort to theater, trickery and deception as part of their overall strategy to gain an advantage. [/sarcasm]

Really though, the problem isn't that there is some automatic self-categorization where "wimps" choose football and "badasses" choose hockey/Am. football/MMA etc. due to pain sensitivity. Only idiots would make that claim.

The problem is systemic, not only for allowing it in 99% of cases, but often for making it downright necessary. As I said earlier, it starts with referees, as I see it. Then again, what options do they have? Free kicks are essentially the problem, disrupting play. Two yellow cards/straight reds are often a complete game changer, and not necessarily for the betterment of play. A "sin bin" system as mentioned above would no doubt cause even more timewasting. Every time a team lost a player, the rest would go into Mourinho mode until their return.

Don't know how it would work outside of a league structure, but what about docking points retroactively? Accumulate enough shithousery incidents, and a point is deducted.

[lmanion]

How is ffp still a thing with the biggest clubs around making a mockery of it

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, lacuna said:

Really though, the problem isn't that there is some automatic self-categorization where "wimps" choose football and "badasses" choose hockey/Am. football/MMA etc. due to pain sensitivity. Only idiots would make that claim.

I don't think soccer players are wimps. But the rules encourage players to be soft, on purpose, and that's my complaint. Eliminate that and I think you can make a great sport even greater.

[BigFatCoward]

Yeah, I'm not down with 'it's being intelligent to gain an advantage bullshit'. Unless I can lie on my statements to lock up baddies. 

[polishgenius]

8 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

Joyce on Twitter mentioned something the other day about Benitez saying that Digne was available, and then Digne ruling himself out shortly after, so not sure what's going on there.

I gather Digne had some things to say about Rafa's negative style affecting his game, so what it seems like is Rafa decided okay then we're replacing you but Digne, most likely, thinks Rafa is not long for this job and if he sticks it out he'll be back with a manager who wants to use one of the best attacking fullbacks in the league to do his job soon enough.

[Mark Antony]

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I don't think soccer players are wimps. But the rules encourage players to be soft, on purpose, and that's my complaint. Eliminate that and I think you can make a great sport even greater.

Not sure why people are so defensive about it.. sometimes the diving/faking injury is pathetic and easily one of the most annoying things about the sport 

[lacuna]

39 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I don't think soccer players are wimps. But the rules encourage players to be soft, on purpose, and that's my complaint. Eliminate that and I think you can make a great sport even greater.

Well, thank the stars that you came then, not only to shine a light on this hitherto unknown problem, but also offering your own solutions rather than just drawing the same tired parallels between completely different sports!

On a more serious note, it's not really the case that the rules themselves encourage players to "be soft on purpose", it's the enforcement of them. But on the other hand, what options do refs have that don't disrupt the game just as much or more?

I also wonder if "naming and shaming" could be an idea. After certain infractions, the ref can point to the guilty party/parties and announce their infractions over the tannoy.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

There's nothing sporting about that.

This is a sport that literally has a thing called a 'professional foul', where you deliberately pull back someone who would otherwise probably score. There's nothing sporting about that either. There's nothing sporting about backing into an opponent when challenging for a header, or delaying a free kick by the opposing team by refusing to retreat, or pulling jerseys at a corner, a couple of dozen other things that happen in every match.

But the reaction to all those things is different. If you were only saying that exaggerating contact isn't 'sporting', that I'd agree with. But your reaction to that specific thing contains a lot of value judgments that don't get applied to these other types of fouls.

[baxus]

I think we can all agree there's a lot of things that can be improved in football, diving probably being near the top of the list.

But this "they are soft while American football players are badasses" is just stupid, especially when American football probably has even more issues with its culture. The whole "it's badass to play injured" thing, along with concussions issues is more than enough to never have American football in any discussions on players' injuries and how serious they are.

On the matter of toughness, "they are not rolling around injured" seems kind of a high praise when for most of those players once they are hit they are out of the game until everything is reset. It would be interesting to see how many of them actually do roll around and no one cares because the game has moved on and when it's time to have another go, they have already "walked it off" just like football players do.

And one more thing, it would be interesting to see American football players with a football players schedule - flying all over the continent, playing two matches per week for 10 months in a year for club and country, running around for most of the 90 minutes in each of those instead of changing the entire team on the field regularly throughout the game and taking a break every 10 seconds of actual game time. That might give us more insight in how badass they really are.

[Heartofice]

The idea that diving has something to do with ‘toughness’ is kind of reminiscent of the old school British way of looking at ‘those cheating foreigners’ falling over at the slightest touch, and the good old Brit who never cheats ( except when it comes to breaking peoples legs)

These days though British players are just as likely to dive as anyone else, because it is simply a tactical strategy, and the pressure to win is far higher than to do the right thing. The stigma is pretty much gone. Nobody even mentions it in relation to Ronaldo any more even if he used to be famous for it. 
 

Harry Kane is an absolute elite level shit houser, his entire game is built on falling over at the slightest touch, yet he’s now king of England. Times change

 

[Consigliere]

3 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Not sure why people are so defensive about it.. sometimes the diving/faking injury is pathetic and easily one of the most annoying things about the sport 

Everyone in this thread agrees that diving/faking is annoying. People became defensive because of the repeated claim that footballers do it 'coz they're soft which is complete and utter horseshit; they do it because there's an advantage to be gained by doing it and the chances of being booked or punished in any way are practically non existent. Should officials and associations be much harsher on this sort of thing? I think everyone in this thread would agree that they should but they aren't and don't look to be in the foreseeable future.

The rules as well as how the game is officiated has evolved over the past 25 odd years (being a lot less forgiving when it comes to tackling) which has resulted in the game being more free flowing and played at a faster pace now than ever before. The downside is this has also encouraged players to look for cheap freekicks and penalties. However, this also seems to be an issue that primarily plagues the top levels of football. It's much less of an issue the further down the pyramid you go.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Ofc, but that's really down to the amount of money being involved at the top of the pyramid. The womens' game also has very little problems with that shit.

[Spockydog]

Ooh, this is going to be fun. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Not sure why people are so defensive about it.. sometimes the diving/faking injury is pathetic and easily one of the most annoying things about the sport 

People are defensive about it because I'm an American and compared it to our football. That's where this always goes sideways. 

6 hours ago, lacuna said:

Well, thank the stars that you came then, not only to shine a light on this hitherto unknown problem, but also offering your own solutions rather than just drawing the same tired parallels between completely different sports!

The problem has existed the entire time I've watched the sport, which has been since the late 90's. The NBA had a similar issue and fixed it after a few years. You can do the same. Change is scary, I know, but it's possible. 

Quote

On a more serious note, it's not really the case that the rules themselves encourage players to "be soft on purpose", it's the enforcement of them. But on the other hand, what options do refs have that don't disrupt the game just as much or more?

I also wonder if "naming and shaming" could be an idea. After certain infractions, the ref can point to the guilty party/parties and announce their infractions over the tannoy.

No, the rules specifically encourage players to dive. Otherwise it wouldn't be so common to see players get around the box and then throw themselves to the ground with minimal to no contact. It's obvious foul hunting.

6 hours ago, mormont said:

This is a sport that literally has a thing called a 'professional foul', where you deliberately pull back someone who would otherwise probably score. There's nothing sporting about that either. There's nothing sporting about backing into an opponent when challenging for a header, or delaying a free kick by the opposing team by refusing to retreat, or pulling jerseys at a corner, a couple of dozen other things that happen in every match.

But the reaction to all those things is different. If you were only saying that exaggerating contact isn't 'sporting', that I'd agree with. But your reaction to that specific thing contains a lot of value judgments that don't get applied to these other types of fouls.

Every sport I've played has something that could be called a professional foul. That's got nothing to do with obvious diving.

 

[Corvinus85]

Another disappointing performance by Chelsea. Wolves have been well organized in their last few games, and could have even won the game with more luck in the first half. It's not enough for Chelsea to keep passing the ball around. 

[Iskaral Pust]

It looks like Liverpool vs Spurs is still going ahead despite Liverpool now missing VVD, Fabinho, Henderson, Thiago and Jones due to illness / quarantine.  That’s basically the entire spine & engine of the team.

And playing against a Spurs team who’ve rested for the past three match days because their games were all postponed until their players were available.

[Soylent Brown]

Spurs are still missing a couple of their midfielders, and I wouldn't include Jones as a player of any importance.

Typical that Harry bloody Kane remembers where the goal is when he plays us.