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Match day thread: Stoke

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  • @EwanHoosaami said:
    IMHO, the best ref of recent times was Pierluigi Collina. It appeared to me he had a good communication line with the players and one glare from those eyeballs was enough to deter any approaching tornado!

    Before Howard Webb became labelled a United fan i thought he had a superb authority. It's much harder to berate a ref you know could smash you. Most refs seem to be short or weak looking.

  • @YorkExile said:

    @FmG said:
    Along the subject of cheating...how would people have felt if Bloomfield had "taken one for the team" in the attack which lead to their goal. It was a dangerous break forming (obviously because they scored from it!) and Blooms just stuck out a soft arm to try to stop their player getting past. Personally I'd have liked to have seen a bit of a tactical foul to stop the attack. He would have been booked but they wouldn't have scored. Where would that be on the spectrum of cheating?? Worse than diving?

    A tactical foul such as that which you suggest Blooms should have committed is not cheating. It is an accepted part of the game, frustrating as it can be to be on the receiving end of. No one is attempting to trick or deceive anyone, it is clear exactly what has taken place and you are punished according to the laws of the game. Diving is cheating, because you are attempting to deceive an official into awarding a decision in your favour as a consequence of a foul that wasn't actually committed.

    I am very much in favour of a tactical foul when a team is on the break. I don't think we do it anywhere near enough. Wednesday was a perfect example of us clearly being in massive trouble on the break. I called it as the moment we were going to concede, and from what I've read on here plenty of others did too. I guess it's trickier to see the full picture from on the pitch, but so often the obvious and correct decision to make is to take the yellow card and regroup. Obviously there are caveats around being on a card already, game state, etc.

    Of course tactical fouls are cheating! Look up the definition of cheating.

    Who hasn't utterly lost it screaming at someone for just tripping a man on a promising break. We had exactly that the other week on Horgan.

  • There is no dishonesty or deception in committing a tactical foul, which in my opinion there has to be for it to qualify as cheating. Your second point isn't relevant and I think I acknowledged it in my post anyway.

  • Cheating is by definition to "act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage."

    There's nothing honest or fair in purposely making no attempt to make a challenge and just fouling someone.
    It's simply a different form of cheating to diving.

  • I haven't checked my OED, but how is it dishonest? Unfair yes, but not dishonest. But then all fouls are unfair by their very definition. That doesn't make all fouls cheating.

    Anyway, I'll agree to disagree.

  • You often hear that a marginal foul has been an "honest" attempt for the ball.
    So it stands to reason that just hauling someone down or tripping them isn't possibly honest and is therefore "dishonest".

    But like you say, agree to disagree.

  • edited December 2020

    I suppose with diving, you're clearly trying to gain something, whereas with a 'take one for the team' foul, you're trying to stop the other team from maybe gaining something. But it's splitting hairs really.

  • But I think I also depends on how isolated it is, to an extent. England kicking lumps out of Maradona was clearly cheating (not that they'd ever admit it) as it was a pre-determined part of the game plan.

  • @Malone said:
    You often hear that a marginal foul has been an "honest" attempt for the ball.
    So it stands to reason that just hauling someone down or tripping them isn't possibly honest and is therefore "dishonest".

    But like you say, agree to disagree.

    The key difference though is that hauling someone down is NOT trying to deceive the referee, whereas diving is by its very nature attempting to con the officials.

    In my opinion diving is the worst form of cheating and could be easily stamped out if every Premier or Championship game was reviewed by a panel of three (perhaps two refs and one ex player). Any clear incidents of diving not spotted by the match officials could be retrospectively dealt with by yellow/red cards and/or fines.

  • @chairboyscentral said:
    But I think I also depends on how isolated it is, to an extent. England kicking lumps out of Maradona was clearly cheating (not that they'd ever admit it) as it was a pre-determined part of the game plan.

    There's a can of worms...if there is a stand-out opposition player and the manager wants him 'sorting out'...is that advanced cheating?

  • @mooneyman said:

    @Malone said:
    You often hear that a marginal foul has been an "honest" attempt for the ball.
    So it stands to reason that just hauling someone down or tripping them isn't possibly honest and is therefore "dishonest".

    But like you say, agree to disagree.

    The key difference though is that hauling someone down is NOT trying to deceive the referee, whereas diving is by its very nature attempting to con the officials.

    In my opinion diving is the worst form of cheating and could be easily stamped out if every Premier or Championship game was reviewed by a panel of three (perhaps two refs and one ex player). Any clear incidents of diving not spotted by the match officials could be retrospectively dealt with by yellow/red cards and/or fines.

    Very difficult though as a lot of them are opinion based on pre-set opinions on players and tribal loyalty.

    Take Mane and Salah - I can't stand Liverpool and I think those two are outrageous divers. But more "friendly" to Liverpool people would say they've felt contact and would use the (Loathsome) expression about how they "have a right to go down".

    I'm sure someone like Gareth Bale would also say that a lot of the time the attacker is expecting/fearing some Charlie Adam-esque clogger to smash them down, so sometimes they do their best to jump out of the way and still be playing tomorow!

  • @Malone said:

    @mooneyman said:

    @Malone said:
    You often hear that a marginal foul has been an "honest" attempt for the ball.
    So it stands to reason that just hauling someone down or tripping them isn't possibly honest and is therefore "dishonest".

    But like you say, agree to disagree.

    The key difference though is that hauling someone down is NOT trying to deceive the referee, whereas diving is by its very nature attempting to con the officials.

    In my opinion diving is the worst form of cheating and could be easily stamped out if every Premier or Championship game was reviewed by a panel of three (perhaps two refs and one ex player). Any clear incidents of diving not spotted by the match officials could be retrospectively dealt with by yellow/red cards and/or fines.

    Very difficult though as a lot of them are opinion based on pre-set opinions on players and tribal loyalty.

    Take Mane and Salah - I can't stand Liverpool and I think those two are outrageous divers. But more "friendly" to Liverpool people would say they've felt contact and would use the (Loathsome) expression about how they "have a right to go down".

    I'm sure someone like Gareth Bale would also say that a lot of the time the attacker is expecting/fearing some Charlie Adam-esque clogger to smash them down, so sometimes they do their best to jump out of the way and still be playing tomorow!

    Hate that phrase with a passion, wrote a whole piece on it with Salah as the hook and Liverpool fans weren't best pleased ?

  • I think Jason Cousins had a few things to say about Liverpool players diving.

  • I think the problem is that ‘our’ diving isn’t up to Championship standard yet.

    Perhaps we do need DDH after all...

    (For the avoidance of doubt I am NOT being serious. Being serious, probably 80% of ‘dives’ are an action intended to provide a visual cue to the referee that some contact has occurred and the referee may care to consider whether that contact was unfair or not. I would call that more gamesmanship than cheating.

    The other 20% is pre-conceived wishful thinking by the diver that either a bit of contact might happen or the referee is half blind and useless. An assumption on the latter is perfectly reasonable so hard to judge the diver too harshly.

  • You know my view. January...Parker out, Hylton in...occupies defenders, physical, scores goals...remind you of anyone?

  • No no...clearly we'll bring the Millwall tall lad in.
    Go even more in on the high long balls.

  • I am just crossing fingers we keep Josh Knight. If we keep him AND find a good striking option, so much the better!

  • I don't think we're likely to get the kind of striker that can really take advantage of the kind of chances we generally create. Need to get Fred and Horgan more consistently involved higher up the pitch and solve the creativity problem. If we go for a striker if will be a target man if Uche isn't fit / we want something to fall back on in case he keeps picking up injuries.

  • Talk of bringing a striker in seems to avoid the obvious issue of us barely creating chances.
    Unless it's a striker who can make something out of nothing, we've already got a top finisher in the building in Kashket.

  • Yeah, there aren't many target men who can do that. Kieffer Moore is probably the best example of one who can at this level, he's been immense for Cardiff so far. I think we need to find a way to work the ball into good crossing positions and find Bayo from there rather than going long to him so predominantly. Mix it up a bit. I almost think Fred and Horgan are hindered by how much defensive work they do - I know Horgan drops back to receive quite a lot, but I think we'd really benefit from having him higher for the full course of games.

  • Because we have to defend so hard at this level we don’t get many men forward. The full backs don’t overlap and the wide midfielders have to cover back as well. That tight shape has kept us in the game against ‘better’ teams but it means we are unlike to create many chances.

  • I think we just need to find more of a balance. And there have been games where we've looked happy just to not lose, like Huddersfield - we could have been a lot braver and won that.

  • I think Horgan looked most dangerous against Wednesday, when he played most centrally and we were generally even narrower than normal. But then their wing-backs weren't very effective and we were happy to let them have it and crowd the middle instead. It's probably going to be hard to give him so much freedom with our midfield so beaten up at the moment though. Tomorrow might be a park the bus kind of job.

  • edited December 2020

    We have to focus on not conceding as we aren’t set up to score many goals...Gaz and Dobbo know that and set us up to keep clean sheets as far as possible. Defensively minded flat back 4 and typically 2 defensive midfielders...but that only leaves 4 attacking players on most occasions.

  • @Forest_Blue said:
    We have to focus on not conceding as we aren’t set up to score many goals...Gaz and Dobbo know that and set us up to keep clean sheets as far as possible. Defensively minded flat back 4 and typically 2 defensive midfielders...but that only leaves 4 attacking players on most occasions.

  • edited December 2020

    True, but we have had some really strong attacking performances in which we've also kept it tight enough at the back (mainly Watford and Birmingham). Just need to become more consistent. Brentford I can maybe understand, but we were definitely too cautious against a pretty toothless Huddersfield side.

  • I heard you the first time.

  • Interesting to read Daniel Farke pinning the Championship's lack of goals (this is the lowest-scoring second tier season ever) largely on exhaustion and how relatively easy it is to focus on being solid rather than attacking. https://theathletic.com/2232325/2020/12/04/championship-fewest-goals?source=user-shared-article

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