KentVillan

Andy Robertson was upgraded to red by VAR for a similar incident (at 3 mins here). Key point is lack of attempt to play the ball, it lowers the bar for how dangerous the foul needs to be to be a red card.

You honestly think that was a mistimed tackle? Watch it again a few times, please.

Yes

In Sunday League, the ref is probably giving the player the benefit of the doubt that it’s late and clumsy. At this level, we all know McGinn timed that tackle exactly as intended, ie he never meant to play the ball. That changes the offence to violent conduct. If you’re making no effort at all to get the ball and you want to foul the player, you need to be pulling them down or doing a little trip, for a yellow. A proper kick like that is a red - it’s equivalent to just randomly doing that off the ball to someone. He might have got away with it on another day, or if he played for another club, but we can’t have any complaints. There was a similar(ish) incident in a Cardiff game a few seasons back, Joe Ralls got a straight red for bringing down Moura. “Tackle” was yellow card level of violence, no real injury risk to Moura, but as there was no attempt to play ball, it was a straight red. Warnock was incensed but ref got it right. This McGinn foul wasn’t quite as obvious as that, but I think if you watch it a few times you can see it’s clearly not a genuine attempt at a tackle and that’s what has got him in trouble, bc then it doesn’t need to be a flying lunge or studs up to be a red.

We just need to calm down. It’s still advantage to us with a lot of football left to be played. Angeball could easily see their goal difference take a battering in that tough run of games they have. There will be more ups and downs in this run in. I can see McGinn coming back from his suspension like a man possessed.

I think he put a bit more force into it than the usual cynical stuff you see, and if you want to go in hard like that you need to make it look a bit more like you’re trying to play the ball. It was the combination of clearly not playing the ball at all AND going in with a decent amount of force that gave the ref the opportunity to red card him. I agree 100% that Sky 6 are probably just getting a yellow for that, but whatever, we need to be smart. The frustration is that McGinn is usually the one keeping our players calm and trying to avoid pointless yellows. Usually he throws his weight around in an aggressive but smart way. That tackle was silly, and he knows it.

I think a lot of you have lost the plot here. Yes this kind of thing is often a yellow, but we can really have no complaints about it being a red, and absolutely no chance is an appeal going to be successful.

He was never in a billion years going for the ball

Clear red card. The actual “danger” is more like a yellow probably, but because it’s so obviously intended to hurt and not win the ball, the ref had to show the red. It’s violent conduct.

Depends who’s doing the overrating. In terms of pure disgusting bumlicking it’s probably Pep or Big Ange, although one is an all time great and the other is a pretty decent manager I think. In terms of being preposterously overrated as a coach and tactician, it’s got to be De Zerbi or Poch

Yeah you’d like to think a proper boxer isn’t letting someone just wind up a haymaker like that. Glad he’s done it though, need to put an end to this bullshit

Good night

Weirdly this looks more like how you’d have expected a Ngannou fight to go before the Fury fight

Ref was truly awful. Our game plan was good, but a few of our players were too casual on the ball. I’m not sure Iroegbunam is ready for this kind of game. Good thing is we’re through relatively unscathed, to try and win the tie at VP, assuming Pau sub was just cautionary.

Ref has been pure shite. Hasn’t really been biased one way or the other, just consistently shite

Second game for the club, away at Ajax, good to see we’re being patient haha

Yep he’s been poor, and he’s one who should be going full throttle here

Well the way Martinez is playing suggests it’s a plan and not just us being shit.

Something to bear in mind is with a thin squad and a massive game on Sunday, it’s really important we make this a low energy game. I think that’s part of Unai’s plan here, to have the players feeling fairly fresh at the end of this.

I think we're playing well within the confines of the plan, it's just a classic bore-them-to-death plan. A few players need to be a bit sharper on the ball, some of it is too casual, but bar the odd scare, it's been sensible away football.

I don’t think back 3s actually help you get more attacking talent on the pitch. At the end of the day, attacking football is a consequence of how you move up and down the pitch, how you move the ball around, not how you line up on paper. I’d go with Konsa and Stones as CBs in a back 4, with one DM (Rice) and then the rest more or less picks itself but with a few judgment calls here and there about who starts and who comes off the bench. I wouldn’t try to shoehorn everyone in. Just make full use of the squad as needed.

That would make a lot more sense, although it would have the unpleasant side effect of allowing Newcastle to do a City

If they were doing that for an extended period of time (ie 5-10 yrs), then of course that would be a problem - although it’s the owners’ problem, not the league’s. If it is just the short-term investment needed to secure Champions League football and profitability at a higher level, it’s probably just an accepted part of the plan. There’s a big difference between this and what Leeds and Portsmouth did.

The problem with FFP is that it’s a gigantic bait and switch. It was supposedly brought in to prevent a Leeds / Portsmouth scenario, and yes, to some extent it does prevent that from happening. But it ludicrously forces clubs with enormous external resources to either treat those capital injections as something like debt (Villa) or to play accounting tricks to disguise that money as revenue (all the Middle Eastern owned clubs). So the main effect is to just pull up the drawbridge after Chelsea, City, PSG, etc had carte blanche to spend their way to established Champions League status. The worst thing is it may force clubs to undermine their identity by cashing in on academy talent, as that brings the biggest FFP benefit. The whole thing is a fkin shambles when it’s being tightly enforced while the fit and proper test is routinely ignored for club takeovers. It’s like there are two parallel universes, one where the rules are strictly enforced, and one where they are laughed at, and we seem to operate in the first universe. It’s completely bent

Does anyone actually know how FFP works