I think there should be a rule against the forceful tactics being employed in the Premier League atm, and when I say Premier League, I mean Man City. The way they went about obtaining Lescott was completely disrespectful to Everton as a club. There you go Mark Hughes, you managed to bully a club into selling one of their best players. Well fucking done. Take your fucking money and fuck off. I hope you win nothing this season as you don't deserve a fucking thing. Cunt.
What I don't like though is the hype it's getting. Ronaldo did it non-stop for United and Drogba, Gerrard and various others in the premier league dive all the time, why single us out?
'cos it was blatantly obvious? mind you saying that most of the players you've mentioned do it obviously as well.. but two (or three, or indeed four) wrongs don't make a right. cheatings cheating. period. why did he do it though? he knew his team would win. it makes no sense to me. and to top it all off once it had been rewarded he celebrated like he had won the world cup or something. disgraceful if you ask me. imagine if you where the keeper in that situation.. you would be so frustrated grrr. i'd like players being punished for things like this.. like maybe a ban of some kind (like the next match/ leg), we all know fines don't work the way they are intended too.. how you would implement such an idea i would'nt like to think. something needs to happen though because its ruining the game and its happening more and more often.
I'm not condoning what he did by any means, I think he should be punished. I was just saying that in the past so many players have dived (some far more obvious) and gotten away with it completely.
100% agree with you Luke Personally I think the people that do dive are usually world class players and have enough skill to avoid situations like that. I don't have an ounce of respect for them. but if they want to live with the reputation that comes with diving, then let them be I guess. There should be a set punishment I believe though, that could be handed out retrospectively looking at the video evidence. Going back to the other night I'm glad to see that he is should be getting a two match ban.
Things that have been confirmed this week: 1) Villa usually get better results when playing 4-5-1 2) Ashley Young can't take penalties
So we qualified ourselves with a 2-1 away win and a 4-2 home game for the group phases. If only those stupid Genk supporters hadn't thrown flares at us and tried to invade our kop. :angry:
I'm really pissed off right now. We dominated for 60 minutes then gave up and whined when luck didn't go our way. Also Eboue diving isn't what we need at the moment. Thanks you useless cunt.
I find it funny that City signed Lescott for £24m and his replacement at Everton, John Heitinga, who is probably equally if not better than Lescott will be signed for £5m. Just shows the state of English football at the moment.
It shows how shit Man City are at scouting players My favourite moment was when someone asked about if Lescott was the best defender in the Prem last season and the reply was "he wasn't even Everton's best defender last season" !! On another note, I agree with a lot of what Arsene Wenger has been saying about the state of football at the moment. Especially about Man Utd's persistant fouling and unfair play. I watched the second half of the game between the two sides and found what Man Utd got away with absolutely ridiculous. I also agree that the whole Eduardo fiasco was a "witch hunt" and Wenger's 100% correct in saying that he could point out 50 other dives that occurred this week and that the FA must now take action instead of singling out one player. With that all said, I'm glad Everton finally managed to scrape a win together, even if we didn't deserve to be 1-0 down.
A funny thing worth noting aswell is that if you look closely at the replay of the foul that gave United their penalty, Rooney starts going down before contact was even made with our keeper. Of course no one will say a damn thing about him because he's English...just like no one cared when he did the same thing to us back in '05 that ended our unbeaten run. Also Fletcher should have been sent off for all the fouls he committed. How we didn't get a penalty for his foul on Arshavin I'll never know. People say "well he got the ball" and yeah he did...with his hand. Almunia made far less contact with Rooney and got a yellow card though. Also in the second half Sagna does a much more tame tackle on Evra than Fletcher did on Arshavin and he gets a yellow card. Mike Dean should never officiate a match of that calibre again in my opinion.
When Fletcher fouled Arshavin I'm guessing advantage was played, I didn't see him touch the ball with his hand anyway, I haven't seen anyone else say that was the case and Arsenal scored after retaining the ball anyway. Almunia's was a pointless foul, not to mention a practical obstruction so I don't think there was much wrong rlooking purely at those two decisions.
You definitely should have had a penalty for that foul on Arshavin, IMO. Football really needs to start using some of the technology from rugby concerning the crowd being able to hear the referee (I'm not sure if the crowd in the stadium can hear him though?).
Advantage wouldn't have been played if it was a foul in the box I don't think, it would have been an automatic penalty. Fletcher definately hit the ball with his arm though as he slid in on Arshavin. Even Jamie Redknapp was talking about it at half time. I know we scored like 20 seconds after but if we didn't that would have been a real talking point. I agree though that Almunia's foul was pointless. Rooney was never gonna shoot on his weaker foot from that angle so there was no need to come out and get the ball. Surely he didn't think he could out-pace Rooney to the ball...