Rice played schoolboys, U19, and U21 for Ireland and made 3 appearances for the senior team before switching to England. Something tells me he won't spend his career at West Ham.

Man Utd fans are insufferable, most are glory hunters. They have gone from writing off the season to start talking about challenging, all while not looking good winning 4 games on the trot.

Yes, changing nationality isn't the greatest sign of loyalty, Dec! Mind you, if anyone will relate to it, Bernard will. What I can't work out is why Rice - born and raised in England - decided as a teenager to represent Ireland, courtesy of a relatively (excellent pun) distant connection through his grandparents from Cork.

Not all of us! When I was a teenager, Liverpool were more popular here because they were far more successful. Man Utd were a close second but the success under Ferguson, the marketing behemoth they became and of course the Roy Keane influence saw them become the biggest by a long way. That has changed in the last 10 years with kids following Barcelona & Madrid the emergence of City and Chelsea and the resurgence of Liverpool. They are still the biggest but thankfully not quite the monster they were back in the 90s and 00s.

Makes sense, Dec. All my cousins were definitely Man U but in recent years, blanket TV coverage has certainly advanced the cause of other teams.

Interesting thing about Liverpool in Ireland. Before they hit the heights under Shankly, the older generations of my Irish family would have considered them to be a Protestant team while Everton were the Catholic choice. You'd expect that all that has gone now but it was quite a thing once upon a time. Did you ever get the sense of the religious differences?

There’s a real head of steam building over VAR and the weekend’s cock-ups, some of which have for the first time been admitted. Howard Webb is due to take over as Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL. He comes with a solid reputation having built a very credible VAR system in America.

One of the features he’s likely to introduce is the broadcasting over the PA in the ground of the discussions between the match Ref and the VAR Ref with the points at issue being shown on the big screens, all in real time.

In London, they'll need subtitles to understand all those northern accents.

I used to work with a Catholic from Liverpool. He supported Liverpool but always told me Liverpool were the Protestant club and Everton were the Catholic team. Never as strong as the Glasgow divide, hence him supporting Liverpool. But as you say DHD, Liverpool were the Protestant club and Everton were the Catholic club.

I definitely get why he would declare for Ireland as a schoolboy. He may not have been on England's radar and if a kid is offered international football, he will jump at it. I also fully understand why he switched back to England, even if that has not made him particularly popular here.

The disappointing thing is that Ireland currently have their weakest group of players in decades, but if Rice and Grealish hadn't switched allegiance, it would have propelled us up several levels, much like Bale and Ramsey do for Wales.

We lost. We can 'Monday Morning Quarterback' (American slang term for hindsight) all we want but we have to move on.
The takeaways? Our back line isn't as good as we thought. Rashford is not Messi. Haaland will run amok if we see that again. The midfield needs work. Not in the creative end but in the defensive midfield end. Let's be honest. We've been trying to find the next Vieira since he left. Not him physically perhaps but someone who can patrol, disrupt and protect against counters and the backline.

A few hopefuls, Flamini, Torreira, and Partey comes as close as we have for some time. Would have have mad ea difference? I hope so, because if he wouldn't we need to make that our top priority. We scored twice there even if one was ruled against us. We don't normally score twice there and we were close a few times. That is some consolation.

I absolutely knew about the Catholic/Protestant divide with Everton and Liverpool but that had completely gone by the time I started following football (I am 51). The huge success of Liverpool, coupled with the fact that they usually had a few Irish players in the team the whole way through the 1980s made them very popular here.

Arsenal are a far distant 3rd behind Man Utd and Liverpool when it comes to support in Ireland.

Lee Mason is a full time var ref this year, after a cock up in one of the Saturday games (I think it was the Newcastle one) he’s been taken off var duties for this weekend - shame they didn’t immediately take him off var duties rather than let him be the var for our game?

I think the referral for the Ødegaard foul was 50/50 and could understand if it was given as a foul in real time but the two worse decisions were not reviewing the foul on Saka and Nketiah in the box

Conte on Spurs fixtures: "I think it's the first time in my career to see a schedule like this. I tried to check the schedule of the other teams and I have seen in this situation, Tottenham have been penalised a lot."

This is the same Conte that told Arteta to stop moaning about fixtures last year.

If he fails this year he’s off, he’s threatened to be off after a few bad results. Conte has put all his eggs in the winning now box, he’s probably right to to not waste the talents of Kane and Son - but there’s no way he sticks around for a long time if he doesn’t win now. And if/when he leaves Spurs will be in a messy place

Chelsea lose to Zagreb 1-0 tonight. Seen a lot of people say Tuchel has spent £250m on his squad and they’ve got worse.

We cannot finish below this Chelsea team in the league this season

I don’t know what the proportion is of top players that stay at one club for their whole career but I imagine it’s very small, if not tiny. Moreover they presumably play for the biggest clubs where they win trophies. I also doubt Rice will spend his whole career at West Ham.

But I still find it refreshing that Rice is arguably the best midfielder in the country (way better than Arsenal’s Partey and Xhaka) and at the age of 23 hasn’t so far been looking to move on.

Kane I can see staying at Tottenham his whole career. He’s 29 now and in my view is not just the best centre forward in the country, I reckon he’s the best in Europe if not the world. Apart from a brief flirtation with the idea of joining City a year ago, he’s stayed loyal to a club where he hasn’t yet won anything. I find that admirable.

I fear Aubameyang can do for Chelsea similarly what RvP did for Man Utd. If he scores like we know he can, its very possible for them to finish above us. They don't look like doing it now, but he's only one slump and that was with us after a great start. He's scored buckets prior to coming to us and after he left us and I see no reason why it won't continue, even given his age.

Tottenham are up there with us, Man Utd is rejuvenated, 3rd or even 4th is now looking harder to get and if Aubameyang gets his scoring boots on add Chelsea.

Interesting VAR graphics for offside in the Champions League games last night. I can see why they moved away from the horrible and misleading line stuff that we get.

Mind you it’s all a graphical representation (aka guess) much like Hawkeye lines calls at Wimbledon. You’re not seeing the actuality.

But having watched one and one half games live last night and most of the highlights I was struck by how unobtrusive VAR was in those games. Miles better than what the Premier League has to suffer.

Yes Kane is annoyingly good isn’t he. Best in the world? That Haaland bloke looks quite useful.

Marseille play Spurs today. There are 4 Arsenal players (3 are ex players) in the Marseille team. A loss at home would be delightful.


https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2022/09/06/m ... r-arsenal/

Jesus was fouled 8 times v Man U and has been fouled the most times in the league this season, 23 times, next is Zaha on 16 and then it’s players on 12. So apart from Zaha Jesus has been fouled nearly double any other player in the league.

I don’t think we complain to the ref enough about this sort of thing, something like the McTominey wrestling move or when McTominey pushed Martinelli off the pitch (such a cowardly and dangerous move) we should be on the ref and potentially even surrounding the guilty party to highlight the foul even more. The only issue with this is I know that we’d be treated far more harshly than other teams- look at the cards we pick up so easily for dissent and the FA fined us for our protests v City last year when we see twice as bad protests than that go on every single week.

I think Haaland has to do it for far longer than half a dozen games at City for me to put him above Kane, who in addition to his goals also provides plenty of assists. It may well change (I’m sure it will as they both grow older with Kane getting into, and further into, his thirties and Haaland towards and into his mid-twenties), but at this point in time I still rate Kane as the best centre forward.

As I have said before, Haaland looks like a monster.

He's like the kid in the playground who is bigger, stronger and faster than everyone else. That allied to excellent technical ability and cool calculated finishing makes him almost a freak of nature.

He's exactly what City have been missing since Aguero left and if he stays fit I think City will win the league by a considerable margin. Infact, Haaland is like Aguero on steroids.

Was it Rich who said on average Haaland only touches the ball ten times a game? I’m not disagreeing with you socrates. But I will say that if that is the case, don’t underestimate the possibility of opposition managers working out how to restrict his output.

Henry had far more to his game than scoring goals, and to be fair so does Kane. Is it possible that Haaland will need to develop his game beyond what he does at present?

Good to see that Partey is is Ghana’s squad for some upcoming friendlies (Sept 23 and 27). Not!!!

Someone is taking the proverbial here.

Yes that was me, it was a bit of a guesstimate as I’ve not seen the stats in all his games but had seen 3 or 4 of his games where it was pointed out he only had between 8 and 12 touches, in one of those games he scored none and in another he scored a hat trick.
One touch finishes - and yes Henry had a far greater all round game and is therefore the better footballer.

It will be very interesting seeing managers try to work him out because he’s taller, quicker and stronger than virtually every CB in the league, and because he takes so few touches is basically inactive until the ball is in the box when he just needs 1 touch and 1/4 ago a yard space, so you don’t/can’t necessarily build a plan around restricting his time on the ball, man marking him or pushing him wide or deep.

Ridiculous. They’ve qualified and he’s their best player so you’d think they’d want to protect him as well. There are rumours he could be in the squad v Everton, I’d absolutely not include him, it’s not the game to rush him back for. Brentford away is a different matter

Common sense and football authorities rarely seem to go together

Tuchel sacked

I reckon Chelsea will go for Potter. I’m ok with that as I think I’d prefer him there than at Tottenham once Conte inevitably *%^@* off.

Bloody quick. Thought Todd Boehly may take a bit longer than Abramovich used to. Wonder if it’s start as you mean to go on?

My money's on Poch

So much for the special relationship between Tuchel and Aubameyang

Obviously CL and world champions title meant f all.

Wow. The new regime isn’t messing about is it

Tuchel out?! Rocky start but Chelsea are only 5 points off us. I guess after spending so much money the expectations are an immediate return with results.

I think he's a good manager. Not sure if he needed more time, wrong fit for whatever reason, but he's got a decent track record.

They’re sixth in the league so hardly languishing at the bottom of the table. New signings often take a while to bed in anyway. Seems obscenity quick.

Imagine letting a manager spunk 300 million then sacking him.

Football just gets madder and madder

Gonna be pochettino

Aubameyang doesn’t feature in his plans and will be sold.

Very odd. Back him by spending £250m and then sack him a week after the window closes.

Seriously flakey owners.

Really surprised they'd fire Tuchel this early in the season. I haven't been convinced with him since he arrived, despite the CL win, but this seems extremely rash. Only reason I can think of is they have someone like Pochettino lined up and don't want to risk him going somewhere else.