But not as a nervous week as it will be for Battersea FC's followers - they lose and they fail and we win.
I'm not sure about that. If the same situation had been going on with Wenger, then who knows? You took full advantage of the situation, and fair play and well done for that. However, we'll never know if this alleged superior mental strength,is yours, as it was never put to the test in the same way. You did have the Fabregas & Nasri situation early in the season - and look at the way you responded to that!!
Our manager chose some awful tactics for a number of those games and Ferguson noted a similar effect upon his own squad when he falsely declared his own retirement.
The fact remains a season throws up all sorts of ****, and its over 38 games, every side has had bad spells of form for a variety of reasons and chucked away points leads, so i see no point in picking ours out for any special attention with ifs, buts, and maybe's. We could blame it all on Defoe for not sliding in half a second earlier for cleaner contact at the Etihad, but there's no point in that either. It should also be noted fans of each side has questioned their manager during their own bad patches. VdV dismissed the England thing and how he's come across so far I can't see a reason not to believe him, he also said he had 3 terrible games in a row himself during our dip. If you were offered last August what we have now, or guaranteed EL in 5th, what would you take?
Looking back on the season, the one that really still pisses me off is the Stoke game at the Britannia. I know that people talk about swings and roundabouts, but I think it's bollocks. The loss at the Etihad might be the most pivotal overall, though.
I think Stoke 2 Tottenham 1, Tottenham 1 Norwich 2 or Tottenham 1 Wolves 1 were far more instrumental
I'd say that whatever you payed Fulop to do an immaculate impersonation of a clown, won you 3rd place. I'm surprised he doesn't actually have long floppy ears! One of the finest displays of goalkeeping incompetence i've seen in many a year!!
we should have kept Fulop,then he would'nt have been avilable for wba yesterday,somebody must of told him as a joke he'd make a good keeper,and he belived them!,as for the catalyst of our downfall,that was the fa
The City loss ruled us out of any title race, the Arsenal loss opened back up the race for 3rd, the loss to Norwich was a huge blow to our chances of 4th and finally Villa was us blowing our chance to keep 3rd in our hands. Ultimately even though at times we weren't very good in our bad run, it'd have been so easy for us to get extra points in nearly any of the games when you look back. It'd be heart breaking if Chelsea win but if they lose I think we can be pleased with how the season went and look forward to a more stable summer of improvement rather than being destabilised by one or two players.
Anyone else see Hansen and Shearer nearly come to blows over this? Linekar suggested, quite rightly, the England speculation unsettled the squad and Hansen agreed - but then Shearer, presumably having to provide the "balance" the BBC have such a hard-on over, tried to suggest otherwise and was practically bitchslapped by Hansen for doing so. Whilst I'm here, I'm hoping that Bolton threaten legal action against Chris Foy for two moronic decisions that got them relegated (the opener should never have stood, and it was never a penalty either) - not least because that means we can follow suit...
Indeed. All the 'pundits' talk about luck evening itself out, but it clearly doesn't. What other team (particularly the Manchesters) had a game anything like that? And then the league ends with such a fine margin of points... but nobody in authority will admit that inconsistent (and possibly biased) refereeing has anything to do with it.....
It's difficult to be unbiased when it comes to who gets the worst deal with referee mistakes but what you can say is that it affects the results. One of the reasons for this is the amount of penaltys we see now and the chages in the rules to protect 'flair' players. This has lead to the diving culture which is the worst aspect of the game. Or as I prefer to call it cheating. I was never allowed to say that on BBC 606 btw and it's a good example of how the Beebs efforts to be fair in fact distorts truth. Refs are always going to make mistakes, they always have, but with the huge amount of money slushing around in the game I can't believe there is not some corruption going on. They found it in cricket where the money is not so big (even including India) it is just not plausible that Football is squeaky clean. The FA would not want to find it would they and FIFA yeah FIFA enough said. Sooner or later I think we will find the stories will break how some mistakes were bigger than others. It's just a matter of time. Sorry to be so cynical
We definitely had some luck at times too but in general the decisions don't tend to have benefitted us in terms of the result. Like Norwich who could've had a penalty but went on to win anyway, the Cahill red card for Bolton when we were already 1 up and dominating. Fulham away when Walker handballed in the area at 2-1 is the main one I can think that we gained points from poor refereeing. Ultimately there's little point complaining, losing the Norwich at home and failing to capitalise on dominating possession and chances against Stoke, Sunderland, Everton, QPR, Villa and United in the second half of the season were just as important.
Can't agree with LDL, you're advocating the worn out cliché that it all balances out over the course of the season. Well I don't agree because that would imply the action of some god of luck, the one that says when you toss a coin 38 times it will come up heads 16 tails 16. Clearly that's not the case and it's quite possible to get bad luck in every single match. I was arguing that on balance we had more poor decisions than good ones. But that's also the point ... refs decisions *are* more important than the "hundreds of other decisions in a game" of the sorts you mention because they are out of the team's control (and also including Yid's point here that other decisions were 'just as important'). So I'm happy to discuss whether we lost at Citeh because Defoe didn't convert that chance because it was under our control, but I don't think you can offset it against any ref decision in that match or any other. Not sending B off for assaulting Parker is in my opinion more important because that was out of our control.
This makes absolutely no sense. We're talking about a season where one decision in one game could've changed things massively. Had your mate Howard Webb sent off Balotelli in our game at the Etihad and the score remained 2-2, for example, then City don't win the title and Arsenal finish 4th. Of course that's assuming that everything else happened in exactly the same way, which it probably wouldn't have, but this is one decision that we're talking about. Given the pretty large number that we've had go against us in games like the loss to Stoke at the Britannia, I think we're entitled to question them. Referee's aren't faultless and neither are players, managers or even pundits, but there needs to be an even treatment of them when they make mistakes. Some refs simply shouldn't take charge of our games. Foy ****ed us royally at Stoke and was given our game at the Stadium of Light, which he was also bloody awful in. Ferguson would've shot him, frankly. Why should we have to put up with him again?
If the majority of poor and decisive decisions have gone against you, then you haven't determined your own fortune, have you? One ref having a bad game is understandable. Appointing a bunch of refs with histories of making mindblowingly bad decisions in our games is not understandable. Foy was universally panned for his performance at the Britannia, including by people at Spurs, so why was he given the game at the Stadium of Light? He was utterly ****e again, so what was this supposed to achieve? There was no punishment dished out to him either and no apology, as has happened with other clubs. Why not? Why do we ever have to put up with Mark Clattenburg, who ****s up every single time he takes charge of one of our games? Why do we have to face Howard Webb, who has an appalling record of giving ludicrous decisions against us? Is it because they're on the Ferguson Approved List and can do no wrong?
Foy had another shocking game that greatly benefited Stoke yesterday - I've yet to see an apology to Bolton for that. I said it a while back in this thread, it's one thing to have a referee who is casually moronic as their ineptitude can work for or against you, but the likes of Foy and Clattenberg (and Alan Wiley before him) have a history of giving ludicrous decisions against us, yet the only time they're criticised in the media is when they chalk off legitimate goals and they're never brought to account. If and when video technology is introduced, they'll soon find themselves out of a job based on the amount of times they're overruled by replays in a season being impossible to ignore.
