Declan

Johan Cryuff?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68906421 Tatlockesque incorrectitude.

In these circumstances, the convention round here is "Nevermind" not "Nil". Or become a subscriber and you can delete posts.

He doesn't have the money.

"If I have a fish for tea the tide will come in tomorrow," said the old man. That night he had fish for tea and the next morning the high tide was lapping against the sea wall. "Told you," said the old man.

And you were proven wrong. They played their best football in the immediate aftermath of the announcement. The team isn't the finished article and come up short at the end of the season. Do you think "not being quite good enough" for lots of complex reasons is a less accurate explanation than "Liverpool would have won it if the manager hadn't said he was leaving" A cup (admittedly the wrong one) and champions league qualification is fine, about expectation and keeping the title challenge alive to mid April made it more fun, plenty of exciting comebacks. It's been a good season, maybe next season will be better. I've asked this before but it wasn't taken seriously, how does it look to fans of teams that spend all their time moving between league one and two to see Liverpool fans acting like this is a bad season? Isn't that entitled and arrogant?

That's potentially worse.

Surely somebody did make that up?

The South didn't matter because no-one from the Government will be standing there next time.

There are people who are unremittingly negative about everything politicians do. There's people on here who slag off COMIN for being useless, some backbenchers for asking lots of questions and being critical of government and other backbenchers for doing nothing. The cognitive dissonance must be deafening. Also woman politicians generally get it worse. But that's not an excuse to deflect criticism.

Or "If people were less informed and engaged in what we do they wouldn't know how bad things are and would be happier."

That's been the root cause of recent poor performances. I think well organised teams have worked out how to deal with Trent stepping into a quarterback role. And being a work in progress they've not got a plan b. Some of the best football we've played this season has been when Gomes and Bradley played like Robbo and Trent in 2020 and got down the wings. But the last throw of the dice last night was to put Tsimkas and Gomes on, but too late.

I think we've got to remember this was meant to be a transition year. There was a whole new midfield this season. Finished 5th last year. The BBC's poll of pundits had us finishing behind Utd this season. If we're honest we rode our luck in some games earlier in the season and maybe that lucks rebalanced itself. Team making progress, third and a cup's a fine season - not the great one we dreamed of, but most fans would be happy with a season like that. It seems churlish and entitled to treat it like a failure.

I agree the last few managers at United have been fall guys for structural problems at the club. The lack of a strategic vision, which the director of football should oversee. There's a lot of short-term decisions to appease the fans on social media. Sack manager bring in an interim, he does ok give him the job. Buy a big name player at the end of his career who's good at first then tails off. United's current team are weird. They can be resilient and have lots of talent but they can completely lose their heads for ten minutes. Sometimes in the same game. Also what kind of football are they trying to play?

I'm not sure all Liverpool fans are "all in" on anything. I could say I wanted Alonso because of his history as a player and with the club. Because he was being successful in Bundesleague and Europe and played a style of football that I like and would favour our existing squad. And we know Jose wouldn't be great fit. But does anyone really know enough about the the Sporting or Feynoord manager? They might be ideal, but I don't know enough. Dutch managers traditionally - Van Gaal, Koeman, the current United guy - haven't been Liverpool type managers. But I'm sure Cruyff would have worked.

But they don't collect our recycling so we have to go to the tip with them. I'd rather Douglas's service.

It would occur less often than under the current laws. At the moment, the linesman doesn't flag when an offside occurs but lets play go on. Most time there isn't a goal and the lino then flags. So people get injured challenging when the play is meaningless. In Thommo's proposal the linesman would flag if he thought it was offside and play would stop. The challenge would only come in if there was a goal and if the linesman thought it was onside and the opposing team didn't (ie every time there's a goal!).

I can deffo see Pep doing that. I guess there could be a limited number of challenges per half and only after "a play" has come to an end. However even then a team hanging on in injury with challenges in hand could use them to disrupt the other team's momentum - like last minute substitutions are used.

It’s not necessarily even taken at the moment the ball was kicked and you can’t see where the Coventry player is either.

You seem to be right ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shoot-out_(association_football)#Procedure See pts 12 and 15 I suppose the other team has the advantage of ditching their worst player. But "If a goalkeeper is sent off during the shoot-out, another player who finished the game must act as goalkeeper." So goalie getting sent off would result in a non-goalie going in nets and the worst penalty taker on their opponents not getting to take a pen.

It's not United specifically, just using it as a topical example. If you revisit my first post - I give TWO scenarios for how this would have played out without VAR, including flagging for offside before the ball ever went into the back of the net. Cov fans may have booed in the moment but it would be forgotten now. I can't comment on that Liverpool were playing at the same time so I've only seen the end of extra time and pens. But, in general the handball rule has also been messed up thanks to VAR and Wenger's Crazy Rule Committee. And that rule affects every level of football - what's an unnatural hand position for an 8 year old running around school playground? And this business of the yellow card count beginning again for a penalty shoot out. That's like a free pass for goalies to be unsporting.

Yeah but Hamas's psy-ops wing are playing Metallica to put them off.

They didn’t stop the game though did they? Nor have people celebrating unnecessarily, followed by deflation. Also we have the situation where play continues there’s a challenge and a player gets injured and then the linesman waives his flag for offside. An automatic near instantaneous system would work better but this business of drawing lines on a still image of a moving incident hasn’t removed human from the situation. He’s still making a subjective decision about when to select the still image. VAR has changed the rule at the top level away from giving the benefit of the doubt to the attacker. Was that the intention?

Yesterday was a good example of why VAR is bad for the game. In a non-VAR game one of two things would happed - the linesman would have thought the Coventry player was offside, waived his flag and the game stop long before the ball went in the net. Game would continue from a free kick. It would have been forgotten in seconds. OR he couldn't decide and would give the benefit of the doubt to the attacking player and the goal would have stood. To me, either option would be more natural.

The Government could attempt to renegotiate the common purse agreement. But I recognise that is a drastic measure. Is there an opportunity to return some VAT in certain sectors, if the Govt wanted it?