We see the bias that you get from top pundits and commentators. We see the bullshit that comes out of the mouths of loads of ex-players.
I understand that you can give them the appropriate training, but they barely understand the rules of the game as it is, and change their opinion of them week-to-week. They go by what they feel should or shouldn’t happen, not what the rules themselves say.
We need better refs, not ex-players.
You’d have to be out of your mind to think that VAR is going anywhere. The genie’s out of the bottle, both in England and worldwide. The entire footballing community has accepted VAR, warts and all. You’re going to see it entering more facets of the game as time goes on.
When sacking a manager, you have to sit there and ask yourself as a club if there’s anyone available, or even interested in the job who could do better.
I know you’re a United fan, and your fanbase (as with most bigger Prem clubs) jumps to “get X out” as soon as results start to deteriorate, but that isn’t a sustainable way for smaller clubs to build.
Kompany is a decent, if green manager, and I think that once Burnley with all their new signings start to gel, they’ll be fine. That might come too late for it to mean anything this season, but clubs shouldn’t be panicking just because it hasn’t happened yet. Burnley will probably go down, and they’ll be fine. And will probably be in with a chance of coming straight back up with an even more experienced manager and a better-run team.
The two questions for me are, as someone not well versed on the Prem laws and rules:
Is the points deduction itself commensurate with the level of the transgression?
Are the Premier League going to apply this standard of punishment evenly across the league?
As long as those two points are covered, then there can be no complaints. But as I suspect, point 2 is going to be a huge question at the minute. And I would appreciate any insight into where the Prem got the 10 points from.
Luton were on the receiving end of a points deduction that was, essentially, designed to destroy the club, certainly for the EFL to wipe its hands of us for good. We were not unique in the number of administrations and the supposed financial irregularities were rife throughout the Football League, but we were chosen as the sacrificial lamb to be made an example of.
And I can say from personal experience that points deductions don’t punish the right people. For us, those who got us in that position were already long gone by the time we got that -30.
If you’re going to punish something, you make sure everyone guilty shares the punishment.
I don’t mind him having us tipped for relegation, in a weird fucked up way I can even maybe excuse the “can’t take them seriously” comments. He’s just saying what the mainstream have been subtly implying for a while now. At least he had the balls to say it.
But the thing that got me was what he said about the stadium, about how we did the “bare minimum”, which was such a braindead and insulting thing to say that I’m surprised an editor or someone didn’t pull him up on it. Work trucks were in the day we won promotion and they were working nearly 24/7 to get it up to the Prem’s specs. That was an absolute herculean effort on the part of the club and the entire town that it’s an absolute wonder that he follows the world of football at all.
Still a long way to go…
As John Still used was fond of saying the season we won promotion back into the EFL. “Never too high, never too low”.
My experience with people in the Prem is that they tend to focus on what’s right in front of them rather than looking at the bigger picture. A season’s “over” after one thrashing, so-and-so’s going down after three or four games. Just got to take it a week at a time.
We’re going to get a manager the sack this season. We used to do it in the Championship all the time.
This is what the ‘Teams Like Luton™’ mentality does to clubs.