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2024-25 Premier League Thread

I get it if the losing is driving him a bit nuts, and they fear him doing lasting damage to their personnel relationships out of frustration. Some guys aren't built for the losing and he seems irrationally wed to having his teams possess the ball, which his roster just isn't built to do at this level.
 
VinatieriDefinesClutch said:
My goodness, just get rid of VAR if you aren't going to use it. Villa both simultaneously played like shit and didn't deserve to win and also had a win stolen due to an uncalled penalty that was so bad that the commentator just joked about how bad it was for the entire second half and then a clear foul on the game winning goal go uncalled and unchecked. That ref is unfit to be at this level as he's clearly too afraid to make a decision and VAR is run by other referees who are all clearly are more concerned about hurting each other's feelings than getting calls right. Kamara got literally stiff armed NFL style right in front of the ref at one point and he just acted like that's part of the game.

I don't feel like it was targeted at us or anything, I just think it's a shit ref who wasn't calling clear fouls the entire match. It was a two goal swing because of those two calls that went against us so I definitely feel cheated.
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I was saying the exact same thing (just get rid of it) to my friends in my LFC chat group. That was a horrific miss for the first call, and how in the world did they miss that blatant foul on the GWG. Really felt for you Villans after that. Half the time the VAR guys get it right, and half the time they don't. Why use it, then, when it just slows down the match (of course, on the first call in question there was no call on the pitch, so we'd be complaining about the missed call anyways)? Or get some impartial officials in there to do the job correctly?

Reds making me nervous now. Wasn't ready to claim the Prem in early December but all of the sudden, that nine-point gap on Arsenal and Chelsea is down to two (though we do have a match in hand). Bad keeper error in the Newcastle match to throw away two points, then Andy Robertson's poor challenge on Harry Wilson (though former match official Dermot Gallagher thinks it wasn't a red) leaves us down to ten men with 75 minutes vs. an improving Fulham side. Still, the defensive errors in the buildup to both Fulham goals are a cause for concern. Trent is back to his haphazard defending recently, and Andy Robertson is clearly struggling this season (can't wait until Kostas Tsimikas is back healthy). Then they bring on the kid Quansah who just gets bullied by Antonee Robinson before laying off the ball to a charging Rodrigo Muniz, who himself bullied Joe Gomez to get to the ball first and slip it past Alisson. Fortunately, Diogo Jota is back and he netted us the leveler in the 86th minute. Good to get two points under such circumstances but it's a slip in form overall.

Oh, and one more thing: is it me, or is Antonee Robinson quietly establishing himself as the best left back in the Prem? He was MOTM in my eyes, terrorizing Trent and Quansah in attack, and frustrating Mo Salah for the most part with his defending.
 
Ed H in Pasadena said:
Oh, and one more thing: is it me, or is Antonee Robinson quietly establishing himself as the best left back in the Prem? He was MOTM in my eyes, terrorizing Trent and Quansah in attack, and frustrating Mo Salah for the most part with his defending.
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Not so quietly IMO. He's been a beast these last couple of seasons.
 
Just seems he's made the jump from "among the better" to "among the best" now. He's been fantastic the last two seasons. Can see why he's been linked with some top EPL sides, United and Liverpool among them. Liverpool, though, don't usually go for players in their prime playing years, preferring to bring in younger players to develop them. Antonee would be 28 at the start of the next Prem season.
 
Chelsea winger Mikhailo Mudryk tested positive for a banned substance after playing for Ukraine during the November international break. Multiple sources told The Athletic that he tested positive for Meldonium, which, according to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, is typically used clinically to treat “those suffering from heart conditions, such as low blood flow to the heart and angina”. It can assist with endurance and recovery from exercise. It’s not approved in the US and really only used in parts of Eastern Europe. It was added to the list of banned substances in 2016. Tennis player Maria Sharapova was among the first to test positive for it, in 2016 and was banned for 2 years. She had been taking it for 10 years before it was banned.
 
Mudryk also busted out the old "I never knowingly took anything illegal" line. Always best to stick to the classics. Next he'll be blaming contaminated beef.
 
jeffbear said:
Mudryk also busted out the old "I never knowingly took anything illegal" line. Always best to stick to the classics. Next he'll be blaming contaminated beef.
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Sharapova got her ban reduced from 2 years to 15 months by saying she had taken It for years. It was legal on 12/31/15 and illegal on 1/1/16 and she was busted in January. So it was semi-plausible. Theoretically, Mudryk has no chance. But this is WADA after all.
 
And apparently the new group has flipped their debt into equity and is buying the debt from the other major lenders, which means that TFG should be able to operate going forward without crippling debt service and sketchy financial partners. Primarily, it gets them out from under the thumb of those creeps at 777. Those pirates would have probably have forced a balloon payment right after the new stadium opens just to be pricks. The deal also means that Moshiri took an absolute bath on his controlling shares. I've seen valuations that put him somewhere around 20 cents on the dollar. Honestly, he'd have been better off burning that cash.
 
Battering City is one new Christmas tradition I can really get behind. City just cannot control the middle of the field anymore and Villa put out a lineup that was oops all central midfielders.
 
Yeah, Villa getting Onana back to full speed really made that a rough outing for City. It freed Villa up to shift Tielemans to a more advanced role when they shifted into that 4-2-2-2 thing they do in attack and on the counter-press and City just never had a real answer. I can't claim to have watched City play much during this skid but hoo boy, they're a mess.
 
I was watching the Liverpool v Spurs match and I realized why I've never been able to take Diogo Jota seriously. He looks like the white guy from Abbott Elementary.
 
Just get rid of VAR already if you aren't going to even pretend to use it. That's never anything close to a red against Duran and for VAR to look at it for half a second and go, yup, you got that right, no need to rewatch a game changing decision is baffling. Anthony Taylor is a weak pathetic man who gets influenced by the crowd and is too sensitive to get his feelings hurt by being forced to see that he was wrong. It probably won't get overturned either, cause we aren't Manchester United, so there won't be a giant stink about it from all the media forcing the issue.
 
I’ve only seen replays, but what the hell was Duran supposed to do? Defy the laws of physics? Just an awful call.
 
Not only did they not make him look at the replay, they cleared it in zero time whatsoever. Like, before the broadcast could even replay it, the announcers were saying that VAR had confirmed the call on the field. The broadcasters on my feed went right along with it too and even said how Duran tried to cleat him in the head as well, but just barely missed. I was all excited to watch a lot of boxing day football as well and instead I turned this farce off pretty early and didn't watch any more matches.
 
OK ... Villa can stop getting effed over by VAR now. I know they avoided that mess for a long, long time but they've had their allotment now. Thanks.
 
My goodness, Maatsen is so damn good and even him single handedly winning the last match after subbing on won't do anything to the fact that he's almost guaranteed to be on the bench in our next match. You can't make it make sense to me. Also nice to see Buendia looking nice in his longest by far premier league appearance of 15 minutes. If I were to circle three players and how they've been used (or unused more accurately) this year to sum up my Ted talk on how Emery has been kidnapped and replaced by a doppelganger, it would be those two and Philogene who apparently is going to be sent back on loan after such a big stink was made about how Emery insisted it was a mistake to ever let him go and we had to get him back and then proceeded to never actually use him.

Also, Liverpool drew against Man U so we all have some embarrassment going on. That first goal by Lisandro Martinez would have been impressive for a striker let alone a center back. Great movement and my goodness was that strike unreal.
 
Honestly, I thought Digne was very good before getting subbed off. I did immediately think of you when Maatson skinned that guy on game winner though.
 
They basically gameplanned to let him have as much time on the ball as he wanted. The defense was shifted over and any time Bailey touched the ball he was immediately swarmed by two or even three players and having basically no defenders on the far side of the field. When the ball was on the left side, they barely shifted the defense over having one person trying to block crosses into the middle and daring Digne to go by them while keeping most of their players in the middle and keeping defenders still near enough to Bailey on the right. It was so blatantly clear that their gameplan just was under the assumption that Digne cannot hurt them so just leave him open. He attempted four crosses with zero successful crosses. That's his one thing, right? He delivers good crosses. But they're never from dangerous areas so their defenders are all set in much better position to deal with them than we are to attack them. They do look really pretty, to be fair.
 
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