Tonights FA Cup game on Sky is Man Utd v Middlesboro. Worth a watch as Balogun might get a game.

My mistake, it's on ITV and he starts.

Ooops Man U knocked out of the Fa Cup by Boro on pens

Omari Hutchinson with another stunning goal for the U23 tonight. He could find himself on the bench for the first team in the run in. Left footed winger who plays wide right, wears 7 and likes dribbling and driving infield and shooting. Sounds like Saka. He’s very talented.
Salah Edine also scored a great goal

Pleased about that, but what a terrible decision to let Boro's goal stand - inexplicable.

Worth watching the highlights: Our man had a few good moments going forward, Ronaldo missed a penalty in normal time and they missed some easy chances. Its a feeling our man won't get too often in his career - being in a side that wins at Man U. They put out a good team.

Good ol' VAR eh ?

Premier League without VAR: Arsenal in Champions League places; Everton soar to safety

https://www.espn.com.au/football/englis ... -to-safety

"But ESPN can reveal that without the decisions of the VAR, Arsenal would already be sitting pretty in fourth spot and dreaming of that place back among Europe's elite."

Reading the article they have a very arbitrary way of calculating the table. They’re actually making the table more unfair because they are taking the first var call of the game and just reversing it including offsides which from what I’ve seen this season are being called 99% right. The only offside I disagreed with was the Firminho one v palace when he was deemed not to be influencing play when he jumped for the cross with the defender.

My problem with var is 2 things
1. That if the ref is told to go to the monitor it is always an overturn, the onfield ref never sticks with his original decision so I don’t believe the mandate of ‘clear and obvious error’ is being used properly
2. Some of the non-interventions of Var when clear and obvious errors have been made

The NFL initiated a VAR type system many years ago. They have tweaked it. There is a VAR referee in the booth. They have put more cameras at angles that they didn't before, sort of like blind spots of the previous cameras. The decisions are much faster.

I don't watch the NFL like I did as a kid but as far as I know, there aren't too many disputed calls because the number of cameras at various points and a dedicated person who reviews close plays instantly.

Why do rugby players always jog off (to a man) at half time and footballers always walk off?

Even when I played schoolboy rugby we were always told to jog off at half time. Never in football. I’d like to see a football team do it, a psychological thing against the opposition, we’re still fit and not tired we can afford to run off for half time

It’s just half time in the Scotland v England game on BBC. I’m not watching the game but I watched the end of the half because of your post. I didn’t see the Scotland players jog off the pitch, and they’re 10-6 up.

I note 35yo Giroud scored in the Milan derby.

I was hoping Plymouth could get a miraculous win over Chelsea in the cup but at least they made them go added time.

As an aside, I recall old movies that were made in the '30s to '60s in America and there was a unique pirate accent "Oy mi matey" and as I got into football I wondered if 1, that was a real accent and 2, where in Englan it came from. I assumed it came from one of the port cities such as Southhampton, Portsmouth, Plymouth.

According to this accent, one of the actors in the states used his Cornwall accent. lol (which I don't know anyway). Robert Newton is the actor as Long John Silver where the 'r' is rolled.

I don’t understand why Isak is considered a desired forward. This season 18 matches / 4 goals and 1 assist. Last season okay but overall 1 goal every 4 + games. And that in a league where there are a number of weak teams. How can he be worth 77mil

A good question given those stats. So I looked them up.

The 18 matches are in La Liga (he has a further 5 from 3 Europa League games).
Last season in La Liga he scored 17 in 34 which is 1 in 2 (albeit 0 from 8 Europa League games).

So, not quite as poor as you suggested but hardly Haaland.

Stats alone aren't a good indicator often enough. There are players who are simply in the wrong side. Tactics may not play to his strength. Played out of position.

Van Persie scored 14 goals in 3 years with Feyenoord. In that time he made over 60 appearances. Obviously, he didn't get bought because of his goals per game ratio. The scouts saw something that didn't appear in the stats and if you saw the games he was in, he was very skillful on the boal.

Van Persie played as a left winger in his formative years AG

From pictures, Isak always looks skinny to me. As thin as a rake. At least, again from photos, Vlahovic appears a good physical specimen.

Obviously photos don’t tell you everything. But I always think it’s useful for forwards in England to not look as though a gentle breeze would blow them over, let alone a strong wind.

Very happy for Giroud in the Milan derby. Always been a fan. Still think the fans didn't appreciate him enough and we should have kept him.

So at 0-0 in the Liverpool v Cardiff game the Liverpool gk comes charging out of his area and fouls the striker, there was a single defender back following the run of the striker and the Liverpool GK was only given a yellow card. The stupid part of that for me is if the defender had fouled the striker who would have then been 1v1 with the gk the defender would have got a red card. So why when it’s the gk fouling him and all the striker had to do was beat a defender to score in an unguarded net would that not be a red?

Spence the right back who played well against us is having another good game today and has just scored.
Would be a good buy and back up for Tomiyasu.
Strong technical and fast.
Definitely worth a punt.

Food for thought. Surely not?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... j_WdGyaCGw

Senegal beat Egypt 4-2 on penalties. One thing I see too often and never understand it is Egypt’s best penalty taker, Salah was down to take the 5th penalty and didn’t even get the chance to take one. I get the idea that the longer the shootout goes on the more pressure there is on the taker so having Salah on the 5th when it’s quite likely to be a kick to win or kick to stay in makes sense but not if you never get to him!

I recall Ronaldo doing something similar and when he did it I thought it was an ego thing so he could score the winning pen. It just seems far more sensible to put your best takers first and build the pressure on your opponent.

Marc Overmars out at Ajax.

Agreed DD. He played very well. No doubt though his transfer value has soared on the strength of his two appearances against us and Leicester. Might be better to check out who’s Boro’s current right back….they must’ve been relaxed sending Spence out on loan if they thought they had a better rb in place

Not exactly a brilliant thing to do....

An ‘ashamed’ Marc Overmars has apologised and confirmed he will leave his role at Ajax after a series of ‘inappropriate messages’ he sent to female colleagues came to light.

I bet that his wife is impressed.

Not condoning the behaviour which was unacceptable and I don’t know what was said but when I was reading about this I couldn't help think it’s a shame this cloud will probably sit over his fine career.

I don’t think sending female colleagues saucy texts is in any way appropriate these days and he probably rightly got fired but calling them victims seems a bit far and he seemed to take ownership of his mistake by admitting the mistake.

Aubameyang played for Barca yesterday. He must have been trying very hard to get in the goals to show Arteta what is missed.

I watched the end of the West Ham game at the weekend and thought Declan Rice has taken his game to higher levels recently. He's no longer just a defensive midfielder and he is a player who is grabbing games by the scruff of the neck and winning them by himself. Until recently I saw Jude Bellingham has a much better player than Rice and the one I would rather sign, but I must admit Rice has really impressed me this season and I'd happily take either player for us - sadly I think Rice will end up at Chelsea (with his best mat Mount) and Bellingham might be back in this country within a couple of seasons and almost certainly not with us.

Rice and Bellingham is a fantastic midfield pairing for England going forward.

Lots of paper talk about Gnabry entering the final 18 months of his deal and struggling to reach an agreement with Bayern on an extension. If I had to put money on it I'd say he eventually extends with Bayern. Would love to have him back with us if we could.

Rice was always a better and more complete player than Bellingham shows the potential to be. It’s just you grossly underrated Rice. I still remember you questioning Manchester United’s interest in him. Rice would be the perfect signing for them (as he would be for Arsenal’s midfield as he’s comfortably better than both Partey and Xhaka).

I’m sorry but that was the case ages before his recent form changed your opinion of him.

The theory is perfectly simple Rich. It’s the idea of having the best penalty taker taking the one that is most likely to be a decider. Sure, it will be easy to find instances when it doesn’t work but I’m equally sure it will be easy to find instances when it does. You could say it worked for Senegal last night, even if it didn’t for Egypt.

What Overmars apparently did is wholly inappropriate as you say. But Ray Kennedy’s reputation survived something that is surely much worse than sending saucy texts - wife beating.

I read that 70% of penalty shoot outs are settled on or before the 4th penalty kick - so whatever theory people have on a good taker on the 5th penalty it doesn't seem like a good strategy.
If Salah had taken Egypt's penalty 1 to 4 then yes there would have been pressure on Egypt's 5th taker but at least they would have still been in the shootout with a chance to take one

In your opinion Rice has always been better. From what I saw and given the 5 year age gap I would have rather have had Bellingham when I compared the two around the time of the Euros. I questioned Man U's interest only on the basis I thought Bellingham was the better player not that Rice wouldn't hugely improve Man U's substandard midfield.
Football is all about opinions though so you are more than welcome to disagree with mine.

Interestingly Transfermarkt values the two at exactly the same price £67.5m

This season both have played 29 games, both have scored 4 goals, Rice has 4 assists and Bellingham has 10 assists. goals and assists aren't everything but Bellingham is a long way ahead in assists this year.
Gary Neville was asked on twitter who he would rather sign for Man U and he chose Bellingham.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/footb ... e-25083886
Neville has forgotten more about football than I'll ever know and I'm sure there are examples of other knowledgeable people in football who prefer Rice - but saying I 'grossly underrated' Rice's ability just because I preferred one over the other is a bit extreme

Both are good players, at the time of the Euros I preferred Bellingham as I thought he had a much better all round game giving much more to the attacking side, it is only this season that I have seen Rice be any kind of goal/assist threat and Bellingham still out does him on those stats. Now that Rice has added more goals/assists and attacking drive to his game I think choosing between the two is a lot closer.

Wasn’t this highlighted once by Ronaldo insisting he take portugals 5th pen (it’s got to be all about him) then Spain beating Portugal in the previous 4 kicks so he didn’t even get to take one. Crazy

Rich, I fully accept views are subjective. But regarding your stat that Bellingham has more assists, Rice not only plays in a stronger league than Bellingham, but Bellingham also plays for the second best side in the Bundesliga. No way are West Ham the second best side in the Premier League, and are even further from being the second biggest club in England as Dortmund are in Germany. That suggests the assists stats has important provisos that should be considered.

You obviously have more respect for Neville’s views than me. I think he’s a quite entertaining pundit, but so are the likes of Shearer and Richards. Doesn’t mean I trust their views.

Whether that’s the case or not, for the percentage decided before penalty four will inevitably be even smaller than 70% being decided before the fifth penalty.

When Arsenal are in a penalty shoot out, I would feel more confident about our chances if it’s our best penalty taker running up to the ball for the fifth penalty than I would if it was our fifth, fourth, third or second best penalty taker.