Rival watch

Today at WHL was not a penalty even by the current rules.
It was simply a terrible refereeing decision.

 

Don’t the rules say something about an unnatural position of the hand

It never should be a penalty but I don’t blame the ref because he followed the rules

 

1. Jumping with your arms up is not an unnatural position.

2. The is a written caveat to the rules regarding a player not facing the ball.

Not a dig at you but the rule (which is z joke) was not the issue today. A completely incompetent ref giving a moronic decision was the issue.
To watch that on several replays and still make that cretinous decision is unacceptable imho.

 

If this rule is not changed the defence of any football team is going to look like a scene from Riverdance
I have not been this pissed off with a result since hand of God

 

The levels of incompetence involved are shocking.
But **** all will be done.
I have no idea how premier league clubs expect fans to turn up after paying a minimum of £50 to watch referees make decisions like we have been seeing.
Football on tv is **** without live fans ... as is proved by the current situation.
The best clubs will get are tourists and plastics going to games which will kill atmospheres.

The premier league needs to sort it out very quickly cos there is no way this can continue.

 

West Ham murdering Wolves. Didn’t see this happening tbh.

 

They were really quite good against us and we lucked an undeserved win. Think they're a good team with quite a few good players.

 

I'm sure that at least one of us joked the other day that they'd get a better performance with Moyes self-isolating

 

I think they’ve got one or two decent players but in general I think they’re pretty gash as an XI. Great performance today though. Thoroughly dismantled Wolves.

 

Wolves have had a slow start this season

Ironically as soon as the pundits were saying we should hire Nuno Espirito Santo...

 

The current Law doesn't require the arms to be in an unnatural position just that they have made the body unnaturally bigger.
There is no such caveat in the Laws.
I think the ref followed the rule exactly. The only wiggle room is that the Law says the player has to "touch the ball". A pedant like me would say that the ball touched Dier's arm, not the other way around.

 

This season will see a lot of freak results. The amount of games close together will result in a lot of injuries and also the lack of fans makes a huge difference to how teams play.

Wouldn’t surprise me to see someone like Everton or Leicester win the league tbh

 

Jumping does not make the body "unnaturally bigger" because you have to use your arms inorder to be able to jump.
The referee has clearly made an appalling decision.

That rule re making the body bigger came in from defenders throwing themselves at the ball and flinging their arms out (John Terry used to fo it a lot back in his early career) to make themselves bigger.

There is a caveat that says if a player is facing away from a ball that the referee should tske that fact into account.

The there was the fact that Dier got a slight push.

In THIS instance the law was not the issue ... the moronic referee was.

Last weeks penalty to Southampton was a problem caused by the law rather than the referee imo.

The law is stupid but will effect everyone ... today's situation was stupid but other referees would not have given it because it was clearly a stupid decision...

Obviously just my opinion though

 

Ruben Dias is on his way to City from Benfica for £65m.
This takes Guardiola's spending on defenders to a grand total of all the money ever.

 

The bitterness over the frugal transfer activity of Citeh is sad to behold.

 

I feel like City's faults are primarily (though not totally) systemic, rather than down to personnel. They do need a better option at CB and LB (although they have a £50m fullback sitting on the bench as Mendy continues to put in disasterclass after disasterclass), but their losses all follow a common pattern.

Their fullbacks push high, midfielders operate in more advanced areas of the pitch and Rodri doesn't seem to have the athleticism to get back into position in time when they turnover possession, so they're not recovering the ball consistently. Which means any opposition team that have pacy players, and players who can progress the ball forward, will expose their frailties when counter-attacking or transitioning.

Guardiola only really knows how to play one way and that way relies on having the best players available in every area of the field. So either his recruitment has been poor or his tactics are too one-dimensional. In either case, it reflects badly on him.

What should he do now?

 

As you suggest, he needs a very high quality team across the park, quality backups in every position and the exact right players.
Is that a top manager?

It works very well when he has a squad that's much better than everyone else, but that's not really saying much, is it?
Crying about Leicester playing on the counter isn't going to get you the three points.
It's hardly a new tactic for them. Why was he surprised by it?

 

Not sure if you read Rodri's comments post-match about 'football not being fair' and Leicester being 'lucky', but it appears the sore loser mentality Guardiola's got has been instilled into his players.

If you're conceding 5 goals at home, and giving away 3 non-contentious penalties, then having 72% of the ball means diddly squat. Leicester deserved to win because they exposed City's weaknesses and outscored them comfortably. They didn't need to dominate the ball to outthink you!

These sour grapes from Rodri are bizarre considering City are making a habit of losing these days.

 

Possibly he watched our last 2 league games .. 62% possession against West Brom and 68% against Burnley. Not a counter attacking formation at all.

Brenda switched to 3 centre-back yesterday and it worked a treat tbf ... you could see us growing in confidence as the first half progressed and, apart from that cracking strike from our old boy, Mahrez, we were very solid.