I said last season I enjoyed watching the Championship more than the PL. This season is slightly better in the PL, because Liverpool fans have fallen silent, Chelsea fans are crying over some bald headed guy at the helm, and Arteta thinks he's going to win the league again, while an ex Arsenal manager is mixing things up a bit. What's not to like about all of that.
I did think although I didn't reply, that when you put the first clip up, that it wouldn't go down well with some nations. Not really sure how you avoid that conflict, where two sets of values collide. Be interested to see how this one plays out.
You avoid the conflict by telling the backward savages to get on with it. Will they not be selling their **** American lagers and non-halal meat in the stadium?
The pre-match burning of an Israel flag in the centre circle should be good followed by the gay cheerleaders.
It's a piss take mate. Going to Norwich on Saturday which is miles away and leaving mine at 6, gonna have to leave at 6:30 to go to a game 19 miles away ffs. I reckon I won't bother next season if we're in the same league.
Silly question perhaps but if this was just treated like any other reasonably high risk game, would it really be that difficult to manage for the police? I know they’ve traditionally got plenty of scrotes but it seems massive overkill. Police escort from somewhere to get into the ground at 11:15, stop Pompey fans being able to be in that path at that time. Easy.
I'm sure it is quite difficult but no different to a lot of other high risk fixtures. There will almost always be a decent number of people looking for trouble but rare that anything beyond minor skirmishes/missiles happens. At either ground the biggest risk comes from home fans because the away support will always have high priority so vast majority won't want to risk losing that. It's just a case of holding police lines to home fans on specific parts of route (and at Fratton making half the away support miss the first 20 minutes). But it's not as easy as getting paid overtime to stand outside a stadium with no away fans around doing nothing so there is that.
Problem really is that the games are so rare which allows resentment etc to build for years and years. If we played each other every season for 4/5 years it'd probably calm down a fair bit and fans would probably become less accepting of the bubble too. Just bollocks that at a time when loads of police forces are moving away from it as a tactic that they still insist on it here. Think Cardiff Swansea is the only other game now.
