And yet if you look on Twitter, all you see is one Runner after another screaming that Anthony Taylor was trying to cost them the game...
Fred came on as a sub and should've been off within about 8 minutes. Injured one player, then blatantly hacked down another. Ludicrous stuff.
please log in to view this image I haven't seen it, but that looks... off, to me. The timing of the Brighton player playing the ball seems questionable, for a start. Is it with his thigh? The most obvious issue though is that the blue line goes through the defender's foot. It's really clear. That's supposed to indicate how far back he is. It doesn't.
There's also the peculiar implication that being offside with your back to goal and moving away from goal toward the ball so that the defender is actually nearer to both the ball and the goal at time of play is still considered advantageous to the attacking player. I know it's 'the law' but it struck me as totally counterintuitive if not ironic that Mitoma being marginally offside actually meant it was harder for him to get to the knock-on than it would have been had been a yard onside. Not his fault the defender was asleep. Anyway PNP stop being so obtuse.
I actually agree with you here and think that it was harsh on Brighton that it was disallowed. Frankly, with how badly we managed the game in the final 20 minutes, I wouldn’t have whinged too much if it did stand as we completely lost our nerve. But, like you say, rules and rules and Mitoma’s backfoot is keeping him offside. Whether that materially impacts the game, or gives him an advantage, is certainly questionable. But that never seems to be taken into consideration now or how VAR is being used. There’s been other decisions identical to that in the past.
I agree the lines are dubious, and again, not the first time this has happened, but if you zoom in on that image, to me, it looks clear that Mitoma’s back foot is ahead of Tomiyasu’s. Even that red line doesn’t look completely straight either.
It's a really weird quirk of the offside rule that I only realised due to my anger at you winning the league sharpening my focus. It makes almost zero sense. Imagine Haaland starts a phase of play with his back to goal and 10 yards offside. A team mate balloons a clearance into the air around the halfway line and the opposition for whatever reason let it bounce and then one of them slips. Meanwhile Haaland gets to it first because he's Frankenstein. Is that offside? Technically, yes. But it is obvious that the real 'advantage' came from the fact that the opposition screwed up, and Haaland is built like a freak. If anything, him being offside was a disadvantage as it meant he had an extra 10 yards to cover in order to get to the ball first. It's a bloody ridiculous rule.
Erm...think you need to slow down there buckeroo . I know this is off-topic from what we've been discussing, but judging by previous comments, you seem adamant that we're going to win the league. I get the concern, but I wouldn't be at panic stations just yet. There's still 22 league games left, we have a small-ish squad - who are very inexperienced at being in this situation - and we need to consider how we fare in other competitions, as well as managing injuries, workload etc. My target at the start of the season was top-4 and a trophy (which I didn't think we'd get anyway but was hopeful) and I still maintain that's our target. When City have won 4 of the last 5 leagues, have experience in overturning worse deficits than this, and can bring on the likes of Foden, Alvarez, Cancelo and Gundogan off their bench, it's hard to look past them winning it again. We've put ourselves in a great position to secure top-4, but the league is not something I can realistically consider at this point in time because I know how City are a freak of nature.
A lot of it has to do with the Dutch in particular having a knack for strikers being in offside positions, only to run onside just in the nick of time when the ball was played to game an advanbtage Both van Nistelrooy and van Persie were absolute bastards for getting that right, at both club and international level
There's still no comparison though as fundamentally the phase of play you're describing will involve a forward pass or a ball crossed into a more dangerous area. Those salient points are crucial as the offside rule as it is only really takes into consideration lateral/medial distance to goal as if it were an objective advantage in every single scenario, I.e the ball itself is treated as irrelevant. What I'm describing is a player moving further away from goal towards a ball played either backwards or sideways (i.e. neither the player nor the ball are moving into a more dangerous position). The Law will still flag that as offside, even though the evidence in front of us is clear: an attacker moving away from goal from an offside position toward a ball also moving away from or neutral to the goal is demonstrably at a disadvantage as a result of starting in an offside position, yet it is still illegal for them to benefit from superior fitness and/or a sleeping defence. The Law is entirely counter-intuitive.
"...and now,the end is near......." .Some kind of nightmare this. Arsenal walking away at the top.....and Spurs going for walkies towards the bottom. We do have a team and a manager.....don't we? Answers on a returned season ticket please!!!!
Brentford absolutely blitzed Liverpool that half. Had two disallowed, scored two and could have had another. Liverpool’s defence and midfield are so porous. Too easy to play through. Brentford won all the duels and were outmuscling them in all areas. They’ve become uncharacteristically poor at defending from set-plays too. Fair play to Brentford, though. Let’s see if they run out of gas like they did against Spurs or if they have enough to win this.
Konate with a defensive howler to allow Mbuemo to score the 3rd. To be fair to Brentford, I thought they stemmed the tide pretty well after Oxlade-Chamberlain scored. I’m glad that the officials haven’t given into Liverpool’s incessant whining and complaining, though. Makes a change!
