tom_avfc

We needed far too much work this summer. We’re short of a striker and two wingers. There’s no options from the bench and when players tire we have players like Lansbury who couldn’t even get in the Championship side to bring on.

How was that not a penalty?!

Both teams have been dreadful to be fair. Good goal by yarmolenko was the only bit of quality. I also think the context of West Ham being down to 10 men has to be taken into account when assessing the result. A point against West Ham would normally be a decent result but the way the game planned out it felt more like 2 points lost.

Completely agree with this. I still think a lot of our fan base has a level of arrogance where we expect to rock up and beat teams like Bournemouth and Palace relatively easily. I'd have thought a few years out of the premier league would have given people a bit of a reality check but going in to the Bournemouth game in particular all I heard was how we'd beat them easily etc. These teams have been in the Premier League for a number of years and have relatively settled squads of proven Premier League players. By all means we can go into the games without fear and try to win and I'd argue that we have done that by and large. However the overreacting to defeats and the complete disregard to the quality of the teams that we're coming up against (relative to our own side who have played at most 4 games together) is extreme.

I think I’d actually sacrifice the point if the outcome was not having to watch another game “refereed” by Kevin Friend.

I was a big supporter of VAR being introduced but they either need to revert to how it was used in the last men’s World Cup or get rid of it now. Its a system that has largely worked in every league in which it has been brought in but for some reason we seem to have gone with a completely different use of the technology and it’s achieving nothing. Tielemans’ red card, Haller’s penalty and our equaliser would all have been correctly overturned if they’d occurred in the World Cup or in every other league using VAR. For anybody saying that the whistle had already gone, that also wouldn’t have happened with the VAR use in the World Cup as the refs had been trained to allow play to go on to let VAR and the refs work in tandem.

This is the issue for me. There's no point in having VAR if they're not going to change decisions. The foul on McGinn at Spurs, the foul by Trezeguet on Saturday and the foul on the Man City player were about as obvious penalties as you're likely to see. If decisions aren't going to be overturned then they should just get rid of VAR as all its doing is slowing down the game. Just to be clear, I'm all for VAR in general and, as an example, the way which it was used in the men's World Cup led to much more consistent and correct decisions. The way its being used in the Premier League just seems bizarre to me.

I’ve never known the demand for tickets to be this high to be fair.

It'd be nice to know how many are left. The AVFCsupport twitter seems to give one update throughout the entire time that tickets are on sale. I'd rather know whether it was worth bothering to try and get tickets at 5 as the Spurs game turned out to be a frustrating waste of time with the limited number of tickets available.

Presumably because there will be many with family and kids who wouldn’t go to every game but may make the odd one. I suppose if somebody has paid £400+ for a season ticket then it’s fine for them to be given some priority on tickets for matches. Do you not know a season ticket holder who could get tickets earlier for you?

Kodjia doesn’t have a chance with many on here and unfortunately if last year is anything to go by with many at the ground too. He came on for 15 minutes when we were getting absolutely battered by the champions league finalists of last season and unsurprisingly got very little ball and lost the aerial battle against alderwiereld and Davinson Sanchez. He had nobody anywhere near him on the rare occasion he got the ball and forced to spend the majority of his time on the pitch in our own half. Douglas Luiz was literally jogged past for their third goal but kodjia gets hammered for laziness in a game where he was feeding off absolutely nothing. I’m not sure how he was supposed to press 4 defenders and 2 midfielders on his own either as the rest of our team were pretty much camped on the edge of our own box. Im hindsight it would have been a better game for Davis to come on as an out and out hold up player as that game was never suited to kodjia’s strengths.

I genuinely thought we did have more time on the ball in a lot of areas today. Hourihane looked good because he was given the time to play balls out from midfield, the wingers seemed to have a lot more time on the ball. Jack got caught in possession once and gave away the ball. Yes, it’s a bad mistake and yes, he’ll learn from it but I’d rather our best player wasn’t just hoofing the ball back to the opposition and played his natural game.

I’m not sure how it wasn’t a penalty to be honest. They did VAR it and the commentators on sky just said “never a penalty” but he looked to have got none of the ball and clearly took mcginn out. Just seemed a bit odd to me.

Kane’s one on one was offside and the header he was under a lot of pressure from Elmo. Spurs had 7 shots on target to our 4. Until we tired we restricted them to shots from a long way away. Heaton made 2 good saves albeit they scored from the first anyway eventually. We looked good at the back and I have hope that the likes of grealish, jota and Wesley can come more into games at home and against the weaker teams.

I’m not sure what you mean by 2 points lost as we’ve ended up with no points and could never have got 2 points! Irrespective of that, how on earth can losing to the champions league finalists be points dropped. If anybody went into the season expecting us to get points away at spurs then they’re quite frankly mental. I was proud of that performance. We dug in well. It’s no marker for the season as we’re obviously going to have to take a completely different approach next week but until we predictably tired that was a good performance.

Hutton and Richards joining on free transfers maybe?

In my opinion the rest of the chant is stupid let alone the ending with the racial undertone. Why would we randomly sing about one of our players drinking vodka and jager? There's not even any reason for any of this chant.

Agree with this. It’s one of those songs which is probably funny when you’ve had a bit to drink on an away trip in Europe but in hindsight is a bit embarrassing.

Completely agree and I don’t really understand the pundits questioning why he’s being booed. He cheated in one of the most outrageous ways I’ve seen in any sport. Great player obviously but I hope the sandpaper incident rightly sticks with him for his entire career.

I felt the opposite to this to be honest. It feels like it’s going to be difficult getting tickets to many away games this year. I can’t really complain as I haven’t done many aways in the last couple of years but getting any kind of away booking history feels a long way away.

Looks like a good signing on paper for Small Heath. Can't say I've seen much of him but he was a highly rated youngster and he's now got over 40 appearances in the Eredivisie. Surprised they've been able to pick him up and looks good value. Unusual for them to have done something positive to be fair!

Well sure, if Ronaldo has raped someone in Las Vegas then I'm sure he'll get the condemnation and sentence which he would deserve. Given that he's not been found guilty yet of this offence I'm not comfortable with passing any kind of judgement on that situation and given the experiences of other sports stars I'd rather reserve my opinion on the matter until more is known. Basing opinions of people on allegations is a dangerous road to start on in my opinion. I completely agree that in the grand scheme of things, ignoring a fan who's after an autograph is a non-issue but that doesn't mean I don't see it as rude and arrogant behaviour. I think a more reasonable Ronaldo comparison to make with this situation is his top off exuberant celebration after scoring a penalty in the Champions League final with the game already won before this. He took a bit of stick for this as again its a sign of an egotistical character.

When a fielder throws the ball back in and this results in the ball going to the boundary the 4 runs are added to completed runs at the time. These four runs are 'overthrows'. Additionally if the ball doesn't reach the boundary the batsmen can run overthrows which are added to runs before the fielder's throw comes in but this is irrelevant here. This appears to have got quite controversial in this case as apparently the rule states that the 4 runs will be awarded as well as any completed runs at the point of the throw and any run in progress where the two batsmen have crossed. Given that Stokes and Rashid hadn't crossed at the point that Guptill threw the ball in, it seems that 5 rather than 6 runs may have been the correct decision here. Obviously there is some confusion as to how the deflection off the bat affects this ruling but its being questioned fairly widely this morning by the look of it.

This is the thing for me too. It's fair game for people to say that Pogba/Lingard/Rashford etc. look like a dick but as soon as anybody says it about Rapinoe they're offended by her or they're a "fat gammon". I don't particularly like the dancing around and arrogance but to be honest I have more of an issue with the lack of acknowledgement offered to a young fan asking for an autograph. I'd have an issue with that if it was any famous sports person or other celebrity and would certainly call them out for it. The fact that a lot of her other actions (the dancing around etc) give off the impression of being a bit full of herself doesn't do her any favours when she's filmed ignoring fans. I have a lot of respect for what she's achieved and for a lot of the principles she stands for but that's not going to stop me from calling out behaviour which to me at least is dickish. I'd extend this to a number of other players in that US women's national team to be fair. The "tea-drinking" celebration, the interruption of the opposition's post match interviews etc. whilst not being particularly offensive just give off an impression of arrogance and to me are pretty classless. Again I'd call out any team acting like this in victory.

Yeah these are all fair points but given that the ICC seems to have asked for slow pitches throughout the World Cup I’d argue that a better batting pitch could probably have been produced if it was requested. The World Cup as a whole had been pretty low scoring given what we’ve seen in England in odi series recently. It kind of negates the home advantage as these pitches don’t really play to our strengths. Completely agree that this isn’t a great advert for the game for any casual cricket watcher tuning in!