I'd actually say it's the exact opposite. Teams like West Ham and Southampton who have had good starts, were able to attract some top players in the Summer, players who are capable of playing for a top 6 and possibly even top 4 chasing sides in my opinion. Enner Valencia was one of the players of the World Cup for me and was amazed West Ham got him where as Graziano Pelle had/ has a strike rate that has only been bettered by Ronaldo, Messi and Zlatan over the past 2 years, both sides have also signed some impressive "unknowns" - Tadic looks a seasoned pro already and Sakho has been on fire. A club like West Brom signed Jolean Lescott, who on his day I'd say is one of England's and the League's best CBs. Hull made some awesome signings too. Most of the sides mentioned here would usually sign a few casts offs from bigger clubs or find a few freebies/ cheap buys from abroad, instead they're signing proven Prem players or guys who've got impressive reputations from abroad. It makes it more frustrating for teams like us, Everton, Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool as our ambitions are to reach the Champions League or higher and the added quality of other sides now makes it more difficult to reach our targets. For a neutral though, I think it makes the league much more exciting and entertaining.
Just a query really.... When Gary Monk gets fined for not towing the party line that 'All referees are saints and it's a jolly tough game so leave the poor little dears alone. They DO NOT make mistakes OK!' can't he just refuse to pay it and take the FA to court or something over freedom of speech. He didn't personally insult the ref or say he was corrupt. So why are managers so scared to tell the truth? Surely the law backs them up?
Taylor was the ref in our 4-0 win over QPR earlier this season. Don't remember him having much to do. Last season he was in charge of our 1-1 draws with West Brom at WHL and away to Hull, where I'm sure there was something controversial, as well as our home win over Southampton. Previous seasons only saw him feature in our 2-1 win at Swansea and a 2-0 win over Newcastle, when he sent off Kaboul. The Frenchman got wound up by Tiote's constant, unpunished fouls and nutted him. Very poor performance by Taylor that day.
My wife watched that match...shes a very calm and kind Sheffield Wednesday fan (unless discussing sheff utd) ... to this day she can not stand Tiote cos of his behaviour that day.
If you want to see bad refs,you should see the one's in the conference South,the one we had on Saturday was so bad,he must hsve got his badge from a cornflakes pack.more worrying,a lot of them are the future Refs for the P/L
Probably not the way to deal with a ref's decision that you don't agree with: [video=youtube;wjjKnjFZcww]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjjKnjFZcww[/video] Did look like a very dubious stoppage and the other boxer's reaction was pretty strange, but that guy's career is over and he's facing criminal charges.
Yes, PNP, that is exactly how ****e refs should be dealt with. There is are too much PC correctness going round these days. I am all for vigilante justice if it's deserved. Discuss.
The ref is on a learning curve that will culminate in him only stopping fights when the loser is in no condition to do him any damage.
Chelsea have signed Fabregas and Costa making them considerably better. City have spent fortunes again. Liverpool sold Suarez but spent the cash bringing in half a dozen players. Arsenal have spent, Spurs have spent, Everton spent loads, Utd broke the bank at Monte Carlo. Soton sold , but spent it all on some decent players. The rest of the PL have strengthened, as always. The competition may be more intense, but how is the league weaker? Come on , DL, tell us how
My feeling is more teams have gotten those crucial 3 quality players. Teams of only grafters can't score and go down. One or two quality players and they can get a few results against good teams, but are too easy to shut down for the most part. Three and it's West Brom this year: with a decent chance against all but the top two teams, it seems. It's simpler to build a good team by getting seven players to do the cart work for three, than it is to try to blend a few high quality and a few medium quality players, with no one quite clear as to who is supposed to be doing the cart work for whom. Over the course of the year the teams with more talent in depth should overhaul them, but you never know.
I'm with HIAG for the vigilante justice! Such a shame no one done that to Jonathan Moss over the weekend (preferably a fan though, so no player would be held responsible ).
Couldn't we have got Sherwood to do it? Tell him that he took the piss out of his gilet or something.
I'm not Clattenburg's biggest fan, by any means, but I think that he handled this incident fairly well: [video=youtube;Bgu_jMekRn0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgu_jMekRn0[/video] Cameron Jerome has claimed that he was racially abused by Giuseppe Bellusci during last night's 1-1 draw between Norwich and Leeds. He stopped the game, talked to both players, both managers and the Leeds captain, then took statements from the players after the game. Jerome clattered Bellusci shortly afterwards and was booked for it. Can't see what else the ref could've done under the circumstances. Hope it gets sorted out properly once they look at the footage, if there's a better angle of it.
As superior as football is to American games, American officiating and for that matter commenting are to football officiating and commentators. Here are some reasons why I like American officiating more: 1. Life time bans for anyone who so much as bets a dollar on their sport, let alone their team. 2. Very high pay for most officials, and a very long and intensive training and selection process in which baseball umpires, for example, work their way up through the minor leagues (to earn their $250,000 or so a year as major league umpires.) 3. Widespread use of technology (though this has the downside of too many stoppages in play). As for commentators, the problem is that English commentators are going about it in the same way they have for decades, and American commentators have mostly grown up and gone on to something better than cheerleading. My ultimate moment in bad UK commentating came in the Cleverly-Kovalev boxing match when the announcer asked, breathlessly: "Is this the night Cleverly ascends to superstardom?" If you knew much about boxing, the storyline of the fight was that it was perhaps the most egregious example of boxing manager malpractice in the new millenium. Apprarently dazzled by the prospect of more money than they'd ever seen, Cleverly's manager threw his Euro level fighter to one of boxing's two most ferocious lions (P4P, ATM). (Instead of doing what they should have done, which was give a fighter much longer on marketability than boxing ability easy defenses of his small belt into his late twenties, before creating a superfight, hopefully against a slightly past it big name.) Needless to say, Cleverly didn't so much ascend to superstardom as descend to the canvas repeatedly in a remarkably one-sided, albeit brief, drubbing. I was dumbfounded that the commentator knew so little about boxing he couldn't draw the proper conclusion by comparing Cleverly's duck-footed, gloves for earmuffs stance (wards off the haymakers from club fighters) with Kovalev's classic style.
