"All I'll say is, the defender put his arm out forcing the referee into making a decision" And in the event that doesn't make up the refs' mind, add some diving to the mix.
Player doesn't put his arm out then there is no decision to make Every single Spurs player would have done the exact same thing
I'd agree that Dier was naive in putting his arm out. But TBH, it wasn't even a very convincing dive. Enough for that idiot Dowd though, apparently.
For those in this thread who didn't watch the game: Full game stream (click the full game tab): http://www.lastminutegoals.org/tottenham-hotspur-vs-liverpool-premier-league-highlights-full-match/
Had Allen stayed on his feet there would have been no decision to make, just like there's no decision to make when players get involved with a bit of jostling or anyother minimal contact that happens all the time in games. I doubt there will be much of Dembele in the highlights but if there is, watch players reactions to Dembele taking the ball past them, they all make contact with him despite none of it being deemed enough to be a foul. This is why the level of contact Dier made is nothing unusual and doesn't force the ref to make any decision. I personally think that it's a freekick and booking for a dive but I'm constantly perplexed by the attitude of tolerance for players who throw themselves to the floor under minimal contact. I know that so what really baffles me is the inconsistency in the 2 penalty decisions(Agger tugging Ade's shirt being the other). There were 4 outcomes, neither getting given, both getting given, only Ade's getting given, only Allen's getting given. Now both getting given and neither getting given are obviously consistent(whether right or wrong), only Ade's getting given can also be consistent as he was physically prevented from getting to the ball, whilst Allen provented himself from getting to the ball by throwing himself to the floor. The only one that makes no sense is just to give Allen's since he clearly saw both and by giving Allen's he sets a very low bar for the level of infringement required to constitute a penalty, with having Ade's shirt pulled taught being well above that bar. This isn't a one off either, Dowd has done this on several occasions including when Allardyce got himself fined for pointing out that there were 2 identical handball, penalty shouts in a game, one got given to Man Utd and West Ham's was waved away.
Credit to Liverpool. Not good enough from Spurs. In addition to/aside from the obvious: We lost this game before the kickoff. The first few long punts downfield, nowhere near connecting, radiated no belief. Not enough runners in the box, and a couple of good chances missed (by Ade and especially Chadli) demonstrated it never really changed. Stirling has been looking like one of the best players in the league. Eriksen has not had a single shot or cross from the edge of the box, after being perhaps the best player in the league from there at the end of last year. Some combination of him and the system need to change so this happens. Acquiring Fazio looks well-judged. Kaboul made too many mistakes, but we still need someone commanding in the air. I wasn't much impressed with Vertonghen either. If he is not creating attacking opportunities (where he may be as good as any defender), he's a mediocre CB: too slow, and, if not exactly mistake-prone, not too solid either. Chiriches was far better than either against Limassol (albeit against weak opposition). Dier was called for the pen and was partly at fault for the first goal, but over the course of the game was very good nevertheless, tackling hard and getting the better of opponents any number of times. Rose had a very difficult assignment and didn't do too badly, working hard and effectively with Chadli. My back four right now is Rose Chiriches Fazio Dier. I'd pay Southampton 12 million to see the back of Townsend. Bringing him on, who has scored one goal in open play in his history in the PL, and that by mistake, when we needed goals, rather than Kane, who's been scoring freely, was absolutely inexplicable, and yet managed to be an even worse move than I envisioned. Ade was our best player, Dier next. Capoue was good, as was Dembele. Bentaleb and Rose were decent. Chadli worked hard and got forward, but needed to score on an easy chance. Eiriksen was anonymous. Systematic fouling succeeded in frustrating Lamela. Vertonghen was not good enough, Kaboul awful. Edit: reading other comments has changed my view on Lloris. I still think he was fair overall, though not, perhaps, good, as I'd originally thought. The game was an advertisement for why PL rule enforcement sucks devil cock. A rather mild pullback from Dier draws a pen, two fistfuls of shirt on Ade doesn't. Why? Because Allen dived and Ade didn't. So the rule enforcement system makes diving mandatory. Cut the crap. Making officials into inept drama critics does not work. Officials should blow their whistle the moment they see a foul, with the foul they are going to call in mind. It prevents acting from affecting the call (much) in the NBA, and would be much better than the drama-queen-and-their-enablers system the PL have come up with. Judge the foul, not its aftermath, it's as simple as that. Also: intentionally fouling should not be rewarded. Grabbing a player to prevent him playing football is not a tactic anyone wants to see. All intentional fouls, like the, what, four or five yellow cards Lamela has drawn this year, should result in a penalty kick. You must have missed the end of the game, when Ade didn't.
Bollocks! Ade had his shirt tugged and stayed on his feet. There were also numerous ocassions where Liverpool players laid there hands on Spurs players yet none of them threw themselves to the floor. We're not whiter than white when it comes to exaggerating contact but Allen's dive was farcical and would never have been given at the other end, as we saw with Dowd turning down 2 appeals towards the end of the game.
"Every single Spurs player would have done the exact same thing" And then immediately get a serious harrumph from me and others.
If the defender didn't grab Allen then why put his arm out? what was he attempting to do? Especially in such a position of the field. I don't think it's a penalty, Adebayors is a bigger shout, but the defender gave both player and referee the chance for a penalty. So as I aid earlier, blame the defender. And no, I don't condone diving. It's a part of the game I hate and would love to see it erased. However, it is unfortunately part of the game.
When liverpool concede a penalty like that I hope you feel so ok about the opposition player diving...cos that is what he did...dier did not do enough to cause that fall...you claim we would have done it...ade didn't (we have had players do it ... bale being the high profile one who as a result didnt get dead cert pens cos of his reputation). The he was touched argument is bollocks imo.
And no, I wouldn't be happy about a penalty like that being given against us but then, I never said you should be either. I wouldn't be happy with the diving player but the defender would be my main target. There is no need to put his arm out, if he doesn't (and he achieved ****all by doing it) then there is no penalty.
Thanks for posting the links Inda. For me that game is a result of a series of circumstances coming together. One of them was that Liverpool played very well, and credit to them. They pressed hard, and their pace and movement going forward was excellent too. So we got beaten by a good team playing very well, so what else? Well Kaboul looked way, way off the pace, even more so than his last few appearances. He even looked downright weak at times, which is never something I thought I would be accusing Kaboul of looking. There were more than a few heavy touches coming from a number of players at key offensive and defensive moments, Kaboul and Capoue in particular IMO. Lloris's distribution was alarmingly poor, its not his strongest asset anyway but today was bad even for him. Maybe they were rattled by the early Liverpool goal and were apprehensive of another drubbing like last season. Rose was so-so. Dier is not a RB but is doing a reasonable impression of one, I can't wait to see him getting some games at CB with a proper RB outside him. Verts was very suspect in ariel battles, we all know it isn't his strongest area but he was downright alarming today. Capoue was other who looked off the pace, maybe he just needs some competition to pouch him on because it may seem pretty clear that Sandro isn't at all in Pochettino's plans. Bentaleb was so-so too. I thought Eriksen looked reasonable and actually worked pretty hard and effectively defensively, I can remember him making a couple of decent tackles in the RB channel in the first half particularly. Could have done better offensively. Chadli worked hard but it didn't come off for him today. Lamela similarly, and Ade too really. If we have too many performances like that in the near future then you have to question the quality of the players, as it goes beyond pure inconstancy and becomes a question of a lack of quality instead. I am going to stick my neck out and say that 3-0 flattered Liverpool a bit. Yes, they were very good, far better than us in relative terms and I am in no way suggesting that we deserved anything from the game on the strengths of both team's performances, but on another day of officiating Liverpool could have been down to 10 and/or we should have had a pen of our own. Football at this level is so often won and lost in the finest margins and today pretty much all of them were in Liverpool's favour, partly down to their superior play on the day, partly down to our mistakes, and partly down to some poor refereeing on occasion. Don't get me wrong they WERE better than us and deserved the 3 points, but if one or two key moments in the game had gone our way then we'd be waking up to a completely different picture on transfer deadline day, despite being largely outplayed. That sort of thing happens a lot in football. Not saying we'd necessarily have won/drawn if given a pen or whatever but it could well have been transformed from us being outplayed 3-0 to a closer and more respectable scoreline. If there's one thing this Liverpool team can do it is put the hammer down on teams, I thick once they get a goal and a psychological advantage then they really make the most of it and tend to put teams to the sword most times. Thats something Pochettino needs to work on - as a team we need to come out fighting rather than retreat into our shells when teams like Liverpool start coming on strong. We did this well against teams below us last year but as the results testified, we didn't against the teams above us. I think the intensity levels (in terms of speed of play and pressing) didn't step up enough following the early goal and we were eventually made to pay for it. Also, somewhat annoyingly, the commentators seemed at great pains to be pointing out that Spurs were only getting chances from poor Liverpool passing/decision making, while praising Liverpool to the hilt when the majority of their chances came from Spurs mistakes too, as indeed the majority of goalscoring opportunities in ay game of football do. I guess thats one of the reasons I chose to watch the whole game on Inda's links rather than put up with the Liverpool ****fest that surely was MOTD2 tonight. What this means for our transfer deadline day activity I don't know. Unless a VdV comes along - top class at a knockdown price - then I don't see us getting anything other than rotation players (God forbid Welbeck on loan) no matter who we sell, unless the selling is done as part of a swap. Guess thats a discussion for the other thread.
I hope I'm wrong but it looks like we are just as far behind the usual suspects as far as real quality is concerned. Alarming with City and Arsenal coming up. The penalty was galling today, but to be honest we never convinced after the first one went in. Besides, if we had been playing them after Balotelli had been there for a week or two he'd have run riot. Nothing I saw today pointed to our mentality or general toothlessness going forward having changed at all. Not one leader on the pitch. WTF is a the use of a director of football if he doesn't find us players who tick all the boxes, including what's between their ears? So for me, to sum up: SSDS: Same **** different system.
If Redknapp would have been allowed to rebuild the team his way then yes. Don't let yourself fall into the trap of mentioning names like VDV/Bale/King because the season we qualified for the champions leagues, it was the "lesser players", Dawson (spurs player of the year), Bassong(arry signing) , Crouch (arry signing), Defoe(arry signing) , Lennon, Palacios (arry signing) , Kranjčar (arry signing) who where the main players and Huddlestone (who many believe we shouldn't have sold) played the best football of his career, under Redknapp, as did Ekotto and Kaboul was important for certain games (again a arry signing). Yet remember, Redknapp managed us to top four and wasn't backed the following season (yet still took us on a exciting CL run with Crouch) AND in his final season he wasn't backed in the transfer market, so that tells me IMO that Levy was planning for the future beyond Redknapp and took the first opportunity to sack him because I believe he has (always) wanted a Dof/Coach system. The workload involved of working with Redknapp (and no Dof) wasn't a system I believe Levy wanted long term. So here we are, another "puppet" and a Dof (when sacked), who will likely be retained as an advisor for Levy to call upon.
