It doesn't really matter how it's done. If you don't concede any goals, why would you care how it looks?
SPEAKING OF PITCHES THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND HAD TO PLAY THE RUSSIANS ON A PLASTIC PITCH IN A EURO QUALIFIER - THOUGHT WE WOULD NEVER SEE THESE PITCHES AGAIN AFTER QPRs PLASTIC PITCH YEARS AGO
A couple of points. 1. all football pitches should be a standard size. how would it be if you said a goal mouth could be 10% bigger or smaller from ground to ground? It is stupidity that you can get away with different sized pitches in this day and age. You are banned from promotion if your ground is otherwise not up to standards, so why not ban clubs that have too small a stadium to have a standard sized pitch there? I'm sure they would be very quick to rip out a few rows of seats to meet the requirements, if their place in the league depended on it. Every pitch should be the exact same size, end of. No excuses. Same with length of grass. All other sports have standardised playing conditions, football should not be an exception... OK maybe Formula 1, but the less said about that the better. Same size pitch, same grass length. It's like one club deciding to play with old laced up leather balls! 2. I care how my football looks. If we were happy with sub standard defensive football, we'd all be happy to still have Woy as our manager. So no-one give me any bollox about it not mattering if you pack your box for 87 minutes. We would not tolerate it. We play football as it should be played, and we don't get mocked. Teams get frowned upon for playing any other way. From the long balls of Wimbledon to the dirty bastard style of Fat Sam's Bolton, everyone always questions if a team does not play the sport as it is meant to be played. These clubs are admitting "we can't play football, we are not as good as other teams, we can't pass the ball, we can't play fair, so we will do something different to give us an edge" This is equivalent to a formula 1 car taking a short cut every lap. If you can't play the same way as everyone else and win, then train harder, don't cheat.
Indeed, get under pitch heating, get a roof, don't be putting a plastic pitch down. They should be banned.
How is it cheating? Defending for any period of time, packing your box out or whatever it may be, is within the laws of the game and thus is not cheating. Cheating is going to ground when there is no contact, claiming a throw in when it's not yours etc. There are many many things that need to be kicked out of the game before we start condemning defensive tactics. An equivalent in F1, if you want to make that comparison, would be to force those behind you to go off the track if they want to pass you, or to block their racing line (it's the driver behind who is responsible for collisions, since they can see your car). Both are allowed, but are generally frowned upon. You'd be banned for taking a short cut, obviously. I do, however, agree about pitch sizes. At the very least the limits should be tightened so pitches may only vary maybe a yard in length at most.
Fair points (some of them) others are total bollox. "Your passing & distribution from the back was awful etc" and that would be because you play on a ****ing meadow!! "art of wonderful DEFENDING" What Art?? you just packed the box with between 6 to 9 players at all times, that is not art, that is just desperate. If you want to see the art of defending, go watch a bit of Hansen and Lawrenson in the 80's, when the two of them defended with skill. What Stoke did yesterday was pack the box and throw bodies in front of the ball. That is not skilful or wonderful to watch, that was just desperate. That was Stoke admitting they are nowhere the team Liverpool is. They were too scared to play football against us, as they would have been battered. But if you are happy to support a team that is not capable of playing good football, that is up to you, just don't come into the forum of a real football team, thinking you can get all high and mighty and spout off.
No Bolox No 1 WHY does a pitch have to be the same everywhere... they NEVER have been. And you 2nd paragraph is complete and utter Bolox.. no offence meant. No 1 Liverpool spent HOW much this summer, a lot more than we, Stoke did.... No 2 You didn't bloody score, that you didn't was in part due to fantastic defending.. ASK Alan Hansen No 3 YOU missed how many chances to SCORE... No 4 YourIMHO BEST forward player missed a "Sitter" BLAME HIM.. NOT Stoke City or ANY other club.. No 5 We defended v Chelsea just as we did yesterday... No 6 THEIR fans didn't come on here ******* complaining because they didn't get ALL three pts. See you at Anfield where you will problably beat us.. Difference is, the STOKE fans won't say the grass isn't short or ******* long enough.
P.S. we didn't ******* Cheat we scored from a penalty. NO Yellow cards that is the complete bolox part as much as anything. Does Gerrard CHEAT when he dives.... erm.. cos he does and your going to tell me you hate Gerrard for going down too easily no doubt.. GET over it YOU LOST, didn't deserve too, but YOU LOST.
So we are'nt allowed to look at the deciding factors that led to our defeat? There was more to yesterdays game than the penalty. Yes we got beat and well done Stoke City.
Well I didn't use the word cheating, and it wasn't implied, my analogy was along the lines that the short-cut was legal for cars that were not as good. We all know that the best form of defence is attack, and you cannot attack if you have 9 players in your own box. Sure if it is a corner or a free kick, then yes, you get people back, but when you are spending the last half hour of the match in that constant state, you have to think, that this is not right. My point is not that it is cheating, the soft long grass is cheating, the size of the pitch is cheating, this is not sporting, it is suppose to be a sport, and for it to be sport, it is suppose to be two teams competing against each other. Did Stoke try to compete? Were their tactics "Sporting"? Not in my books.
And just because it never has been makes it right? Would it be OK if Snooker tables were all different sizes and shapes? None taken ;-) True, but irrelevant, it is a sport of 11 v 11, and all the rules the FA, UEFA, and FIFA have put in place, that makes it fair, if our players are better than yours, that makes it challenging, but it is still sporting and fair. A great defender he once was, a talker of much bollox these days, he truly is. I would think the word "Desperate" is close to the truth, that wonderful. IMHO I will ask you to go look at a couple of my posts in yesterdays match thread, where I moan about how we kept trying the same tactic over and over again, which was stupid, we should have tried to dribble into the box, rather than constantly trying to cross it in. I have never once said Liverpool were the dog's danglies and we should have won by reputation alone. We missed our chances, and we stuck to pointless tactics long after any half sane person would have realised they were not working. I am not blaming Stoke for that. Nothing to be proud of there either. If you are happy that your team start a match believing they are not as good as the other team, then that is your cross to bare, personally I could not support a team with such a negative mentality, it is your choice to do so... no-one can call you a glory hunter. I am posting to my own group, it is not my fault if this has been cross posted, and maybe we have higher expectations than Chavski, but I expect to get three points every last match we play, and I can point out reasons why we didn't until the cows come home. But no doubt, you will start the match with the same negativity and again refuse to play a game of football and keep playing this other game which is not football. As I say, if you are happy to watch that week in, week out, then bully for you, but don't expect me to not discuss how another team refuse the play the sport they claim to play in favour of the unsporting, desperate style you adopt when you meet someone you are scared of.
Best form of defence is attack eh? Tell that to Blackpool you numpty. Plus were you actually at the Brit yesterday? Have you seen our pitch close up? Soft long grass???? You are totally mad and you know what nobolox? With this constant WHINING you do a disservice to the other totally sound Livepool fans who have come on here and said 'Stoke won, we move on' This will sound patronising but basically I don't give a s**t. How old are you? Time to grow up old son. We did more than just pack the box with players yesterday. We wanted the result more than your lads did and we got it, end of story.
True, but irrelevant, it is a sport of 11 v 11, and all the rules the FA, UEFA, and FIFA have put in place, that makes it fair, if our players are better than yours, that makes it challenging, but it is still sporting and fair. You've got to be joking! Level of spend on players is irrelevant? Not true. If you spend say, £80m on 3/4 players thanks to an enormously wealthy benefactor, that by definition, should give you an advantage over a team that is, for whatever reason, unable to afford that level of spend.
Liverpool fans!!!! you are the best bunch of supporters "apart from stoke" in the prem, yes you lost and yes you did not deserve to lose but there will be days when you have a shocker and win, stoke city were bottom of the championship or near it 6 yrs ago and now we are beating top sides in the prem at home, let us have our day as its not often in the past 30 yrs we have had any, good luck to you guys and i hope you get back into that top 4, hopefully at the expense of the w..ker wenger>>hate that bloke with a vengeance lol
Still talking complete bolox in my book,... I HAVE said, YOU didn't deserve to lose and you obvioulsly did not. YOU did use the word Cheating and WHY bring up Formula one FF Sake? To DEFEND is not cheating and MOST of the Liverpool fans are excellent posters. To keep on saying "If you want to watch football like that" fine. FACT is, we don't play LIKE that EVERY WEEK! Don't believe me, ASK Chelsea fans, we actually OUTPLAYED them for long periods and only drew the game.. Money YOU spend is NOT irelevent.. WHO are YOU tying to fool.. not the Stoke fans as said above. We obviously wanted to win the game. And we did. Maybe we should ask all prem teams to use the same Lawm mower to cut each pitch...
You said: "This is equivalent to a formula 1 car taking a short cut every lap. If you can't play the same way as everyone else and win, then train harder, don't cheat." So yes, cheating was more than implied. Look, I support Liverpool just as much as anyone on this board, and I dearly wish we'd won yesterday, but I won't go around condemning Stoke's tactics. If we played Barcelona, defended for most of the game, and came away 1-0 winners, very few of us would complain. 'Not competing' would be rolling over and letting us hammer them 15-0. Defending their goal and stopping us from scoring is, and always will be, competing.
