Laivasse

I'm watching the Asian Champs League game Al Sadd vs Suwon Bluewings on Eurosport 2. If that sounds too obscure to be interesting, it's the second leg of this game which erupted in a brawl. None of the same fireworks so far. but Al Sadd's cheaty goal is the difference between the two teams on aggregate. The pitch is crap... players are slipping over all over the place and there's a massive buildup of some confetti shit on one side.

Dowd's reffing the Leeds championship game this weekend but I'm not sure if that's punishment or some kind of natural rotation through the divisions...

Terrible refereeing, obviously. He could have stopped play himself for a head injury and had another opportunity to clamp down with a nice round of cards when Suwon were bitching about the goal. I haven't got the slightest sympathy for the Koreans, though. They played on and put in a cross while the Al Sadd players were signaling to kick it out, then their only defense against the goal is some wistful hope for the other team to be sporting? After seeing Suwon play on, Al Sadd continue to challenge for the ball all the way as it goes out of play, plus the player who 'gave' the ball to Al Sadd seems only to have done so because he miscontrolled it then got surrounded. Therefore it's utterly naive to saunter around assuming the ball was going to come back to them on a silver platter. What are their back line still doing in the Al Sadd half anyhow? Even if they do receive the ball back it'll be to their keeper or maybe go out for a throw in their own half, and that's without even mentioning the suspicious movement of Niang, who was clearly running towards the half way line before the ball was played for him. It's like Suwon expected to get the ball passed back to them along the floor so they could immediately resume banging crosses in. Then they think they have the freedom to vent their frustration by squaring off on the other team and use a pitch invasion (from one of their fans) as an excuse to do do some shitkicking. One of their subs ran on to do some Taekwondo and the Keita bloke is the only one to get a red? fkn LOL. Just really annoys me to see that petulance. It is not and should not be a rule that you have to give the ball back after an opposition player puts it out. If it becomes a rule, then it stops being what it is - a symbol of respect and sportsmanship. It's like, 'This is only a game; I respect you; I'm surrendering possession so something more important can be attended to for a moment'. Then the other team gives it back saying 'yes, very noble, appreciated, carry on'. The goal was unsporting, but when it didn't suit them before the goal I didn't see the Korean side displaying much sportsmanship either. After it they showed no professionalism. No tears shed. I mean seriously wtflol is this guy doing: And he didn't get any sanction in match or post match. Joke of a competition.

I'm still playing FM2010 but I didn't want to bump something ancient just to post this little curio. It's the lowest performance rating I've ever seen from any player in any match, for the opposition keeper in an U18s game. He kept dropping the ball which provided at least two tap-ins for us. Can anyone top that?

IMO Heskey didn't really do a better job than N'Zogbia yesterday. N'Zogbia was largely anonymous and didn't do anything of real worth - tried to run a few times, tried to pressure, most of his crosses were blocked, nothing special. He didn't exactly have a nightmare. Heskey came on and had exactly the same kind of nondescript performance, albeit with the lowered threshold of expectation that comes with Heskey. The ball was sailing over his head due to his position, it wasn't sticking to him when he got it, he didn't do anything but the most basic of passes, lacked mobility in closing down, and I didn't see him intercepting or converting crosses. If he had put in the same performance at CF it would have been diabolical, but because he was out of position it's somewhat forgivable so we can upgrade it to 'mediocre'.

I agree. Much as I'd like to seen updated GTA: London, the whole cockney gangster things feels tired out thanks to The Getaway, Guy Ritchie, Danny Dyer and the like. Las Vegas maybe (or Las Venturas as I think it was called in SA)...? Fallout: NV had a stab at the rough layout and you could probably stretch a GTA map out of the locations involved. The main difficulty with it would be that the strip would be a lifeless plastic climbing frame made out of pretty lights, unless they take the next step in evolving the series by including a decent amount of indoor environments.

It's fair enough to say he wasn't much cop defensively but to be fair to the bloke this was his first league game in ages after coming back from surgery. I don't think you can say it's representative of him. He's only had a couple of incomplete reserve games since the op afaik...? Also for their second it's not like he left a gaping hole - he was a shade slow in closing down but Scharner took the strike high and it would have been a difficult block for anyone. Weirdly I thought he looked half decent going forward. Couple of promising near post drills and positive movement. One hopeless hoof though.

Could be he watched the incident at half time and felt like his colleague stitched him right up.

IN fairness we needed somebody in midfield with a bit of presence and on our bench Heskey was best the only player capable of this. wouldnt throw Ireland or Albrighton in to centre midfield in a game like that Was Clark on the bench today? I'd have had him instead. Normally I'd have no problem with bringing Heskey on in a situation where we need a bit of presence, but he was so diabolical against Man City that I didn't feel it could be justified today. In the match thread some said they thought Heskey was 'great', personally I saw him as diabolical once again - and like I say, normally I'm among the minority who appreciate the role he plays.

Shocking officiating today on the whole, but the red is more on the linesman's shoulders than Dowd's. The linesman has obviously got onto Dowd on the microphone and said 'I've seen a definite sending off offense, get to it', so what's Dowd supposed to do? If the imagined stamp had been closer to the ball I think you could blame Dowd for not having seen it and being able to overrule, but it was understandable that he didn't see anything - partly because Herd and Ollson were well off the ball at the time but MOSTLY because nothing bloody happened! I know the line being trotted out is that Herd kicked out, but from the best replay available it looks like he was trying just to reclaim his leg from Ollson, who didn't appeal in any way for a foul. Not only that but the linesman took ages after that moment passed before he flagged, so it's as if he brainfarted, thought to himself 'hmm, what was that? I may have missed something there... oh **** it, let's gamble' and then bullshitted the whole thing, filling in the blanks with his imagination. Awful.

We were cruising for the first 20 against Man City and it didn't take a sending off for us to concede a load of soft goals. Yes Herd's red was a game changer but we created nothing from then on, which to be frank IS unrelated to the sending off, beyond the fact that it damaged our morale.

3 off target including a Bent sitter. Stats don't tell the whole story. I would say that 3 off target 'isn't good enough' and missing a sitter 'isn't good enough' from Bent. Yes, we were robbed by officials and that was the thing which had the greatest impact on the game. However, how far are we going to take that reasoning? We shouldn't even have come back onto the pitch after half time if nothing we did after the sending off mattered. Fact is, it did matter, and we didn't do much. Some people say the subs made sense, I say they weren't what we needed. One ineffective player for another (Heskey for Zog), and one positive attacking player who was performing OK for an attacking player who has been performing less than OK for a while (Alby for Bannan). Alby got two adequate tackles in but didn't get involved in a single good attacking move that I saw. Set pieces need to be improved all round, because let's face it, since when is Herd our only hope for defending crosses? It's unusual for him to even be in the team. The players seemed to lose belief as it went on. Aside from a tidy penalty take, Bent was a waste of space and should have been one of the players subbed. Dowd is an incompetent clearing in the woods... but if he was a competent clearing in the woods, Hutton would have been off anyway. Let's stop acting such victims - victims of rich sheikhs and of blind linesman - and realise there are things the team and manager could be doing which they're not doing.

To be fair, he had a chance early on which even Heskey could have scored.

I don't see what Heskey's done since he's come on at all. He's there for two reasons, to hold things up and put his head on the end of things and I haven't seen him do much of either.

Bent is like an empty space on the pitch atm. It's all very well hoping he'll pop up and score from the right delivery, but at the moment the delivery isn't even there. Now Alby on for Bannan... another bad sub IMO. Bannan's passing was hit and miss but he's getting stuck in and keeping things positive. If Alby doesn't make an immediate impact he'll go missing utterly.

Based on Heskey's form in his last match, he wouldn't have been my choice of sub when we desperately need a goal, as we do. And that's from someone who thinks he does a job for us.

Shite... game over.

I doubt we'll ever see it any better than from the half dozen angles shown so far. From those, the lineman definitely does not immediately flag at the moment Herd may have kicked out - although nobody else seems to have seen him kick out and Ollson doesn't react at all.

Watch the replay and notice that the lineman doesn't start flagging until around 5 seconds after the imaginary stamp, during which time there was no appeal from Ollson, so essentially the linesman doesn't know WHAT the hell he was flagging for or why. Should be an easy one to appeal at least.

BAAAHAHAHA MORE OF THOSE PLEASE

I was about to say Herd's been acting liek he would get sent off, but then the replay doesn't show a damn thing. WTF?

It's no surprise Herd's first touch is worse than that of our most gifted natural playmaker

Fantastic work by Gabby to nip that out of Foster's reach, that was surgical.

Biggest sitter Bent's missed this season and that's saying a fair bit.

Wow, a real blast from the past. One of many MegaDrive games I coveted but never owned.