Yessssssssss! Just watched it on DVR.
It wasn’t clear on reading this whether you were a Hull or Man U supporter, but the follow-up from Lochdale suggests the latter, which is a bit depressing. I still think we’ll win the title, being out of the cup is no bad thing in this respect, even with the large squad we have.
You really think United will still win the league? I’m impressed by your optimism. This is as poor of a United side as I have seen in some time. Other than Rooney they look bereft of real class. Ferdinand is gone and may never come back. Vidic will be off to Spain in June. Berbatov has been a failure. He still has time to turn it around but it’s looking to be a failure oround 2x the Veron scale.
Giggs is still class. Valencia is getting better and better with every match. I think there’s too much at stake (#19 and 4 in a row) for SAF to sit back and not make a move of any sort, so I think some sort of attacking/creative player will be brought in. Nani is clearly going to be gone come next August, it’s just a matter of whether he’d be gone as soon as February in part exchange for someone else.
I was thinking up until yesterday’s kickoff that Wes Brown was starting to look comfortable and excellent again, as he tends to do when he gets a run of games. And then Leeds made him look like a 16-year old going against Brazil. Regardless, United suffer in all phases when there isn’t a settled backline, and with Evra and the twins doing a good job at lb and rb, and Vidic (seemingly) close to health, I think United will be fine in the league.
While I agree that this is the poorest performing Utd team for quite some time (Berbatov - just sell him, sack him, drop kick him, ANYTHING as long as he goes), I still think they will be pushing for the title come May, mainly due to the not inconsiderable factor of every other team being bloody crap as well.
Just remember, around this time last year, after a rocky period, Utd went on to not concede a goal for 13 games. This could easily happen again.
United may also go a lot of games without scoring! Can you imagine what would happen with a serious injury to Rooney?
The twins look good going forward but I’m not impressed with them defensively. Valencia is getting better but Giggs just doesn’t have the legs for the 90 minutes anymore.
As for new purchases, I don’t think they have the money. Supposedly they need 100M a year just to maintain the interest payments. Not sure how tenable that is in the long term. A few bad seasons and things could get ugly very quickly.
Ah, it seems there has been some misunderstanding. I am a proud supporter of Hull City AFC, and would rather cheer them on through relegation season after relegation season than support a vast merchandising conglomerate which plays the odd game of football now and then.
Tigers 'til I die.
Ah, OK - it’s still disappointing that that wasn’t obvious by your previous post, though!
When we are out of the running for the Champion’s League AND the Premiership, then I’ll start worrying about Man U’s performances.
Just saw the highlights from the weekend meeting between Everton and Arsenal. Seems to me that Landon donovan has upped his game. He made some really nice passes, of a quality much better than I’ve seen before. If he actually learned something from playing two seasons with Beckham, I’m willing to declare myself quite pleased with that experiment. 
I’m not sure how lucky Arsenal were at the weekend - they had a bit of bad luck with injuries, and to concede a goal after Denilson’s collapse (why he didn’t kick the ball away first is beyond me) would have been a bit harsh - did anyone else think it was very unsporting for Everton to play on in that situation? It was quite obvious Denilson wasn’t faking anything. They also had a quite a few good scoring chances, probably more than Everton did.
On the other hand, both their goals went in solely as a result of huge deflections. On balnce, I’m going to call it very lucky.
I’m in a similar quandary about Man United. Yes, another below-par performance (where “below-par” means “bad”, not in the golf sense), particularly defensively - the goal was one of the worst I’ve seen them concede. However, Darren Fletcher should not have been sent off, and they had several good chances to win it. Overall, though, it looked like we were quite lucky to escape with a point.
How lucky were Chelsea? Unbelievably lucky.
Why not? The first booking was clear cut. The second, less so, but that sort of tackle gets bookings regularly. I don’t subscribed to the idea that a second booking should require a worse offense than a first.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him warned not booked for the second, but I wasn’t surprised to see the yellow card come out either.
I’m inclined to agree with you.
Of course the players are not obliged to kick the ball out when someone goes down but in this case I thought it was obvious that Denilson wasn’t doing a Drogba, and personally I was surprised the referee didn’t blow up. I only saw the highlights but the way he went down reminded me of Marc-Vivien Foé in the Confederation cup in 2003, and that didn’t end well.
Wenger has spoken up about it today.
I don’t think it was necessarily unsporting of Everton; in a game situation you aren’t obliged to enquire about the situation before you take off on a break. Had they gotten down to the other end, then played ping-pong with the ball before getting the score, that’s quite different. Wenger’s commentary is in agreement with me: his advice is predicated on the understanding that the opposition is hardly going to make a series of enquiries before racing off on the counter-attack.
As for the Fletcher sending off:
Fletcher left his leg out precisely to trip the player as he went by. He did so having already earned a yellow card earlier in the match. He had no legitimate excuse. He was doing it solely to keep the Birmingham player from continuing a very strong run up into the heart of the Man. U. defense.
However, to be cautioned, he has to have been adjudged to have done more than simply commit a foul. Unsporting conduct or persistent infringement seem the most likely. It’s probably not the former, since the trip was pretty innocuous, certainly not likely to cause injury, which is the standard for a caution in that situation. And frankly, I don’t recall a series of fouls by Fletcher after the first card indicative of “persistent” infringement. So it seems to me that he was being cautioned solely because he committed an intentional foul after having already been cautioned. While as a referee I’ve had occasion to wish that was a cautionable offense under the Laws of soccer, they aren’t written that way.
So I’m inclined for once to agree with Sir Alex that it was a pretty ridiculous sending off. I don’t agree with Sir Alex about the “weird and wonderful” flag of the linesman on the Manchester United goal; until he was informed by the referee that it was an own goal (not clear from the side), and allowed the referee to decide if there was interference or active participation despite not touching the ball, the linesman’s job is to have the flag up and confer with the referee. Notice that the referee got it spot on and awarded the goal after the conference.
Hey, when are y’all gonna warm up over there??? We want to see some football!
surprised that chowder hasn’t been in yet. Good result. Where do you think you will finish this season under Mancini?
If you’d been at Eastlands last night you would have seen some football 
A hat-trick from Tevez and a wonderful solo goal from Richards saw Man City see off Blackburn 4-1, a win that takes them up to 4th in the prem.
It would appear that Mancini knows his business and it also seems that he has the knack of keeping players happy. Playing Benjani, the forgotten man under Hughes, is a master stroke as he, Benji, played his socks off.
Robinho was unlucky to have a goal ruled offside but even he seems to have pulled his finger out and is starting to play like the player he is.
To answer OAOW who can tell?
If City continue playing the way they are doing I see no reason why we can’t finish in 4th place and automatically qualify for Europe.
Happy days are here again
Really? It seemed pretty innocuous to me, possibly not even an intentional foul. Hence my opinion that it was harsh.
Agreed, but this was a case of the second booking being for a substantially less-bad offence than the first.
Indeed, which is why it is now common practice not to kick the ball out of play just because an opposing player is down. But this situation was SO clear-cut, I think it was unsporting.
To labour the point: it used to be an unwritten rule to kick the ball out of play any time someone was injured. In the last couple of years, it became apparent that some players/teams may have been taking advantage of this situation to stop a promising counter-attack having lost the ball. It therefore became the unwritten rule that you are quite entitled to play on in such a situation. However, in this instance it was so obvious that Denilson was in pain, and had no possible motive for cheating, that it seemed like a dick move by the Everton players to continue. I can see how they may have just been caught up in the moment about the possibility of beating Arsenal, so I can easily forgive them, but that shouldn’t over-ride sporting principles. [/high horse]
Nice analysis, and always nice to have your professional referee’s input - I didn’t realise the laws actually specified bookings so precisely. I remain unconvinced that Fletcher’s trip was deliberate, however - it looked to me like he was wrong-footed by the Birmingham player and couldn’t remove his leg in time. However, I have only seen it a couple of times so I could be being over-generous here.
Right again, IMO, though I do have some sympathy with David Moyes’s comment that Rooney was right behind the Birmingham defender, so hard to call that not interfering. Replays showed that he was probably onside, however, so as the BBC put it, it was probably “the right decision for the wrong reason”. Funny how football often evens out like that, not normally in such a short space of time, though!
…it’s only been about 30 years coming :).
Haven’t you got your Scotsmen mixed up?
Ignoring for the fact that it was Alex McLeish who was commenting, I’ll make two comments about the offside issue:
First, it’s irrelevant whether he was directly behind or not. As Law XI states:
This is further defined in the official FIFA interpretations and guidelines regarding the law:
Thus, to be offside, Rooney would have had to do one of three things: touch the ball directly passed to him, touch the ball after it rebounded off the crossbar/post or an opponent, or gotten in the way of an opponent/deceived or distracted an opponent. The rule and its clear interpretations make it now 100% clear that being offside itself is not punishable. It can be argued whether FIFA have gone too far on this, but that’s irrelevant to the discussion.
As for whether or not Rooney was in an offside position, his head was clearly in front of the opponent, and that’s all it takes. This is another aspect to the rule that commentators often seem oblivious to under the newly written Law XI. :smack:
Again? 
I was talking with my son tonight over dinner (as he pointedly wore his brand new Rooney #10 jersey which my ex-wife oh-so-thoughtfully provided him with for Christmas), I get great glee that it is Tevez who is lighting up the pitch for City. It will be even more fun to watch him put a few past the posts at Eastlands when United come visiting. 