I'm never sure what the penalty rule actually is, partly because the pundits never give you the rule only their interpretation - and that varies according to who is playing! Basically we've seen lots of times where a ball gets blasted against the arm - and like many others I felt the Liverpool player deliberately aimed at his arm - and a penalty is not given. People say things like it wasn't deliberate because he couldn't get his arm out of the way. Well is that a thing or not? It's implied that the ability to react might be a factor, you know if it bobbles up against the army you have some kind of chance to avoid it so it's a pen, but it it's absolutely blasted at the arm from close range it isn't. But then people simply use the "unnatural position" argument. Well I don't know about you but someone running around with both hands locked behind their back looks pretty unnatural to me. So I can absolutely see why the pen was given... but am also sure that in some matches it would not have been.
As from yesterday it shouldn't have stood as handball but they decided not to use the new rules for the CL final New laws were introduced into world football yesterday but were not used in the CL final, one of them could have made a huge difference. https://www.not606.com/threads/commiserations-spurs.374837/page-7#post-12881414 The law remains that deliberate handball is an offence. But accidental handball will also be a free-kick if... the ball goes into the goal off an attacker a player gets the ball using his arm or hand and then scores, or creates a goalscoring opportunity a player's hand or arm has made their body "unnaturally bigger" the player's arm or hand is above their shoulder (unless the player has controlled the ball onto his own arm or hand) But a handball will not be a free-kick if... the ball is knocked on to a hand by the player in question or a nearby player the arm or hand is close to their body and "has not made their body unnaturally bigger" if a player is falling and the ball touches their hand or arm when it is between their body and the ground to support the body - but not extended to make the body bigger
I think we really need a captain who will lead by example,fight for his team and call out his non tryers! But where is he?
We don't have any non tryers though. If we had we would never have got to the final or finished top four.
I too would have picked Lucas instead of Winks. But Winks was our best player alongside Rose so I would have been wrong. He didn't look unfit to me but was the obvious sacrifice to bring Moura on. When Sissoko went off I would have used Lamela rather than Dier though.
I don’t think anyone was really our best player on the night, Winks certainly wasn’t the worst but I wouldn’t say he was amongst the best. No player done themselves any real justice if truth be told, which is frustrating because so many of them busted their guts in games in against Ajax/ City/ Dortmund to get us to Madrid.
Tbh i thought your defence played really well they got everythinf really and lloris was not really exposed. Of course this was helped by pool dropping back but they snaffled every long ball and they dropped effectively everytime they tried to play it through to mane
Lloris, Winks, Rose, Vertonghen, Alderweireld did nothing wrong at all. Trippier was also fine in defence and Sissoko was fine after the first few seconds. Our problem was breaking down their defence. But we had more shots than in either league match and more shots on target than in both league matches combined. I get why people were disappointed in the result but the performance wasn't as bad as people are making out.
Other than conceding a goal from an unmarked Origi... Winks and Sissoko weren’t at their best. They weren’t the worst on the pitch but both have played far, far better, especially Sissoko. The attacking players were by far the worst on the pitch for us, but no one covered themselves in glory. Having the most shots mean nothing as many were tame. We didn’t break them down well enough to truly test Alisson. Ultimately we put in a limp performance in the biggest game in our club’s history and as I’ve already mentioned, there’s a reason it’s being dubbed one of the worst in recent memory.
This simply illustrates the mediocre stuff we have become accustomed to in recent seasons. The performance wasn't terrible in comparison to most loses or draws in the premier league. That is the point in my humble opinion. In comparison to Ajax and Man City matches though, the performance was poor. It's not even as in Liverpool were any good either. They were there for the taking. Big shame. I didn't go into this match thinking we'd win. I did think we'd fight harder though, and play better.
I'm still of the opinion, as I stated before, that 3 weeks altitude training would have made all of the difference. We could have played the game at full pace then. After 3 weeks, my blood oxygen levels increase by about 78% when I work, not train at 2,400 m and remain high for up to 7 days after returning to sea level.
This sort of comment is ridiculous. The last few seasons have seen the best league results in our history and we reached the Champions League final for the first time. How is that mediocre.? Admittedly, according to some on here, we've achieved that with a passenger at right back, an error riddled goalkeeper, rubbish players in CM and two attacking midfielders who never turn up. Get some perspective....
While Trippier's performance wasn't the dogshittiest of performances from the season, he still made a bunch of irritating mistakes: every time he took a throw-in it seemed he decided that, rather than throw to the teammate with a yard or two of space around them, he'd throw it to the guy furthest up the pitch regardless of whether they had one or two red shirts swarming them. Add to that messing up on the break one time and giving them a free run on goal (IIRC that may have been the shot that went just wide), and of course it was his weak headed clearance that went straight to Origi for the second goal Interesting story from the pub I was watching it in: throughout the second half one bloke bellowed "It's all your fault" every time there was a closeup on Sissoko during the second half, so I guess it wasn't just the referarse who can't tell his armpit from his elbow...
Ok. Let me be clearer. I have plenty of perspective. I just don't have tinted glasses. I am not talking of the entire few seasons as being mediocre, I speak of periods, dips. When Dembele was at his peak at CM, and we had Rose and Walker terrorising on both wings, we had our best defensive record in the PL. Since then, we have been papering over one crack or another with less than stellar results. The best example of mediocre has been the dip in PL form the took us to fourth place when we were once threatening the top teams. You simply don't do that without a mediocre period.
Our slight decline in performance is explained completely by having to play at Wembley coupled with almost the entire first choice team having no proper rest last summer in my opinion. That has certainly led to some poor games at times. I just don't think Saturday was one of them. Liverpool spent the whole game on the defence and did it very well which made it a very poor viewing spectacle. Despite that we created quite a lot of chances. We scored none of them unfortunately. Football is a results business so the game was a failure in that regard, but it really wasn't a bad performance except in the quality of touches in the final third.
I'm sure this month can't get any worse following that result ...wait a minute, who did you say begins their state visit today?
This month isn't even 3 days old yet. Of course it can get worse. Say Poch decides he's taken us as far as he can go. Kane, Alli and Eriksen decide that they were only staying because of Poch and all submit transfer requests. Levy decides Wenger is the man to take us forward - Jack Wilshere is his first signing. Brings Tony Adams in as assistant. Sure it can't get worse?
