To be fair, they should have beaten us on Tuesday and I think they will show more desire in the Premier League matches. A cup run isn't exactly going to be that helpful, in my opinion.
I've decided I actually like Tim now he has nothing to do with our club and is probably too busy to keep commenting on us in the future. Funny that, eh? Still want Villa to go down so that we might actually be able to afford Benteke and Delph but I'd be pleased for him if he kept them up. Here's to hoping I never have the misfortune of listening to Pearce and Savage commentating together ever again. Good to see O'Shea's banging in the own goals again, Poyet really does have Sunderland playing like ****.
Stambouli, Mason, Bentaleb, Dembele, Capoue, Paulinho - do you really need another midfielder? Delph's a good player but I don't think he's that much better than the aforementioned names.
Well Bentaleb and Mason are the only 2 so far that have really fitted into Pochentinos system in that deeper role. Stambouli's done alright and Dembele's doing better playing further forward but Capoue isn't great and whilst Paulinho seems to get what he's supposed to be doing more now, I get the feeling he'll be off in the summer to get more regular football. Delph seems to have that energy and ability to nick the ball that Mason and Bentaleb have so I think he'd fit in well.
You might be overlooking Alli. Apparently, he's a real talent and is expected to be pushing hard for a place.
Arsenal just beat the team who are top of the Championship and that's no mean feat. I'll repeat that it's Arsenal's cup again. They're going to do a Spurs and win it two years running.
Yeah, I didn't think about him. Still it might be a tough ask to come in straight away and go from League One to Premiership level.
Heh, true. It was one of those weird ones where it's technically an upset but I think most PL sides left in would rather have faced Sunderland than Bradford.
I think it makes you realise how overrated PL players are. MK Dons beat Utd (Preston might do yet), Bradford beat Chelsea, Sheff Utd got to a semi final........not by playing physical hoofball, but by playing decent passing football. Are these PL stars really worth a hundred times League One wages?
There are times where it's as if the Premier League is a bubble, and removing a team from that bubble can have dire consequences. Cup shocks in the FA Cup or COC are the obvious example, not least because they seem far more frequent this season compared to recent years, although the same can be said for European competition - in the mid-to-late 90s the Champions League and UEFA Cup would regularly see the Premier League teams getting easily dispatched the moment they faced decent opposition, but in the current day Man City have regularly flattered to deceive in the Champions League, as did Liverpool this season.
I might have wanted Preston to win and would be happy that they have gone 1 up but knowing the draw, there is more hope that UTD beat the Arsenal so.......
Was tough wanting Utd to win yesterday as I always root for the underdog but knowing the winner faced Arsenal, Utd are obviously going to pose a much bigger threat and therefore I begrudgingly wanted them to win, was enjoyable seeing Preston take the lead though.
Not sure about the traditional rivalries anymore. The rise of Chelski and ManC have revised my opinions, plus the perception of the media's sense that Liverpool and ManU are "entitled" to be in the top 4 regardless of performance have also had me revising my opinion. That ManU match also had controversy mirroring some of our problems this season. As well as the dive, I was particularly thinking of the first ManC goal where Lampard was "not interfering with play" despite being offside and clearly doing so! Heard ref on TalkShite this morning (was it Hackett?) saying that that rule is virtually impossible to enforce properly, which leads to the point that two refs seeing the same incident will give different decisions - which leads to the idea that where a ref had a subjective decision to make (rather than where it is a straight yes or no), he tends to go with the larger team. Or Liverpool.
Sadly I don't think subjective decisions is anything new. Handballs were like that for a long time, to the point where all commentators and pundits usually say now is "well I've seen them given". But to be fair they have started making more consistent decisions on penalties for handball now. With the offside stuff it just requires the ref and linesman to communicate. The linesman can't judge whether a player is interfering unless they touch the ball so he just needs to tell the ref who's offside and let him judge whether he was interfering. From there all you need is clarification of the rules, if a player is blocking the 'keeper's view or close to the flight of the ball then he has to be offside.
