Just watched the Eric Dier "penalty" from the weekend. Managers should tell their players to miss any of these bullshit handball penalties on purpose. That will embarrass FA and FIFA hopefully into doing something. But no, people will say you can't implement it. You f*cking can, it just takes balls and morals. One decent, honest manager is all it takes. Others will follow suit.
If Ralph told Ings to miss on purpose, in that situation, I’d respect him for it, and even man-love him a little bit more.
Nice idea but not realistic sadly, managers will want the point/s. It's certainly a complete shambles.
If we are given a penalty, I expect our player to try and score. There were dodgy decisions before VAR. Sort this out by all means behind the scenes, but not on the pitch.
Di Canio gave up a goal once. Plus was it Leeds last season? It happens, and it would make a massive statement.
Yeah it's possible on an individual level. The idea that all managers are going to is beyond optomistic though imo. Too much at stake for most of them and every point counts. The reason the Di Canio one is still talked about is because how rare it is. Honour and sportsmanship died long ago at the top level.
The battle of the ex Saints academy lads, I hope that Matty comes out on top. Looks like Harry's not playing.
It's not the first time I've said it this season already (but if they want any realistic chance of staying up, Fulham probably need to make it the last time), but Ream, Hector and Odoi are all individually nowhere near good enough defensively for the PL. So putting them all together is only going to end in disaster.
It's extremely early, obviously, but scoring in the PL is waaaaay up. In the PL era, goals/game has varied from a low of 2.45/game in '05/'06 to a high of 2.82 in '18/'19. Right now it's at 3.67. More than half the teams in the league are currently scoring more than 2 goals/game, a level achieved by only the top two last year.