David Kelly

There's a multitude of ways they could use VAR better but they seem to be completely against putting these completely simple things in place.

It's hard to believe that VAR could actually lower the quality of refereeing but it has. I'm still sticking with VAR being the worst thing that has happened to football in my lifetime. It hasn't made any reduction in the amount of controversial decisions, the discussion now is just around whether VAR made a mistake rather than the on field ref, and it's slowing games down to a ridiculous degree. A lot of the time the supporters don't have any clue why the referee is delaying a restart. If anything is going to make people fall out of love with football it's VAR.

There was at least two VAR checks in that first half on top of the sending off. One minute of added on time was quite frankly ridiculous. That was honestly one of the least competent refereeing performances I've ever seen (and I'm not even taking the disallowed goal into account as I think pretty much every ref would have made the same decision). He completely lost control of what should have been the easiest games in the world to referee.

I didn't express myself particularly well but I did actually mean Forest and Chelsea could be strong options for him along with Villa. I would imagine Champions League would be a must for them to be able to get him though whereas others may actually be better placed to sign him if they didn't make the top five. I do actually think Man U and Spurs still have more pull than they should have will the way sky have rammed their names down everyone's throats for years. The mess that they are they shouldn't be in the equation but I do think they are. Winning the Europa league and qualifying for the Champions League would absolutely be a game changer for either of them. I've been quite sympathetic to Bilbao for a few years since I spent a week between there and San Sebastian but I'm massively supporting them for the foreseeable.

That will definitely impact a lot. If we didn't make it, it would certainly increase the possibility that we'd lose Isak and then we'd be looking for a first choice striker. If we didn't qualify and Isak did stay, the money we'd have available would change. If Villa didn't qualify then they'd probably lose the opportunity to sign Rashford and could also possibly lose Emery which might increase the chances of Watkins staying and then they wouldn't need a first choice striker. If Forest don't qualify I think that would dramatically decrease the options of signing players. Chelsea are the big unknown as not qualifying should be a big financial issue for them but they way they spend who the fuck knows. Man U or Spurs winning the Europa league (which looks worryingly likely) changes things massively for them.

Do we think that any of the top teams will be in for Delap as their first choice striker? Obviously us (assuming we still have Isak) and Citeh wouldn't have him as first choice. Liverpool and Arsenal I would personally see going for bigger targets. Villa if they don't sell Watkins and don't get Rashford may be a more realistic option as first choice, same with Chelsea and Forest. Otherwise he may be looking at a small step up the league like Man Utd or Spurs but both of them are more likely to ruin his career than make it. Personally, I think we'd most likely be competing with Chelsea and Villa.

Confirmed by the club now.

Yeah but that's pretty much my point. We know that most footballers are thick as fuck so they're never going to be able to get their head round this shit (especially when they haven't had it through their career). So you get the likes of Redknapp last night just ridiculing it and that's only going to turn your average viewer off it even more. Regardless I don't think most punters want chat about things like XG or XP anyway. Its probably better suited to more niche youtube channels or separate programs on sky than your mainstream media. MOTD etc don't have the time to be doing that sort analysis anyway.

This is well put. I think real question is not whether XG is useful, it's how useful it is for supporters. In analysis of how your team is doing and how players (particularly strikers) are doing, I'm sure it's very useful. But showing it to the masses on a quick rundown alongside more traditional stats like possession and shots on target on MOTD or after the match on Sky doesn't really offer that much especially when it's clearly not even understood by the people who are using it. And of course when it comes up with results like last night, it is more likely to confuse than enlighten.

Most of the presenters and pundits certainly know very little about it. With a bit of investigation (or even Gemmill's explanations) it's not difficult to understand but games like last night make it more difficult to take seriously. Even if the penalty had been given an XG of 1, I can't see how the rest of their chances add up to another 1. I mean I can't even remember any other chances they had and certainly whoever put together the highlight packages of the match didn't consider any of them worth showing. 0 for the own goal also makes no sense. I get the explanation but it's definitely a situation that provides us a good chance of scoring. Again it just invalidates the usefulness of the stat. Anyway I was glad all over at the performance and result. Murphy keeps making me look a fool with the sheer amount of goal involvements he has (and most of his assists are proper assists not just one yard taps to someone who then scores a worldy) and I couldn't be happier for someone who genuinely loves being here and seems a thoroughly nice bloke. And Tonali just gets more insanely superb every game. I do feel we must be getting near the point where we should start giving him a rest at the end of games we're comfortable in. Surely he can't keep making the runs he makes in the last ten minutes of games without eventually harming himself.

I'm actually thinking that's really a thread on RTG that I read. I can't believe the people of Sheffield are just as thick as our neighbours with sister/mothers.

He’ll invest in the ground he’ll invest in training facilities he’ll invest in youth setup he will invest what he has to in the 1st team. No more no less than he absolutely has to. He’ll stop the club losing money left right and centre He will find investments He will find good sponsorship And he will probably find a buyer in the future to take us even further forward whilst making a pretty penny himself. Horrible man but knows how to stabilise a sinking ship

I can't say I've ever had any feelings one way or another about Wednesday or their support but after reading all of this I'd be happy for them to have the soul destroying ownership of Mike Ashley. But at least he'd increase their revenue apparently

I particularly liked this comment "In a heartbeat over Chansiri , I seriously doubt he would have thrown the most popular manager in a generation under the bus because he couldn’t afford to sustain a promotion push whilst sitting two points outside the playoffs." It just goes to show that the reality is football supporters have little to no knowledge about what goes on at any other clubs. That thread is just a procession of misinformation and nonsense. I know nothing about their current issues but if they think the fat cunt would be an improvement I would certainly feel sorry them were it not for fuckwits on there claiming we're entitled and that Ashley was some kind of saviour for us.

I'd be very surprised if you can find such a fan. I remember reading an article in 4-4-2 (I think) back in the 90's about why people hate them. There were various reasons ranging from perfectly normal to ridiculous (they represent the Devil being the most insane) but the most convincing was Terry Christian's bit defending them. It was basically 'we are man utd and we deserve everything and you should just lie down and let us take it'. And that was the attitude of their fans for decades. I'd love to see them fall away into insignificance and see just how big a club they really are.

Aye he's very young and inexperienced to get such a job. It's possible he may turn out to be an excellent manager, but I think they were so desperate to try and get the exciting new manager on the block (which they also did to an extent with Ming The Merciless) that they've jumped in far too early.

Surprised Ugarte has ever made it out of Miley's pocket from when we played PSG.

Nope, and then you see Rashford and Anthony looking better as soon as they leave.

I'm not convinced by Amorim at all. He managed to find a set up that worked for Lisbon but the more I see of his Manchester team, the more I think that must have been luck. He comes across as a decent enough bloke but he seems to have absolutely no idea of how to stop the the rot at Manure. He's stubbornly sticking to a formation that he clearly doesn't have the players to make function. I appreciate he was brought in to try and replicate what he did at Lisbon but what he's doing now can only be effecting them negatively. Will the players he has there who should be of a decent quality, ever have any faith in him when what he's doing this season is basically making them look like fools. Surely a good manager would have recognised that he didn't have the tools to do what he wanted this season so come up with a plan to get the best out of what he had until he could reshape the squad to one capable of playing his way. The way they are playing now, you would have to say that they would be in a very real relegation battle had the bottom three not been so bad. They're only three points ahead of forth bottom West Ham! If I was the owner of them I'd be very concerned that what he's doing with that team is significantly reducing the value of the players they will be wanting to move on in the summer to help finance another rebuild. Not far behind my big hope that we get top five this season is the hope that they get knocked out of the Europa League so they finally finish a season with what they deserve. Absolutely nothing. No trophy and no European football. If that happens anything more than mediocrity for the foreseeable looks well beyond them and Big Andy and the like will have to get used to taking beatings from better run clubs like Brighton and Bournemouth.

Tino's crossing seems to be much better with his left foot bizarrely. Can think of three goals in the last four games that have come from his crosses whereas he was very poor in his delivery from rightback. He's always looked a better leftback for us than rightback imo. Tripps has been excellent since he came back into the team as well.

That's not actually true. I assume you're basing it on what was shown last night but that was since December I think. Over the season as a whole there are more players who have more involvements than him (Haaland, Palmer, Wood, Mbeumo to name a few). But your point certainly remains valid as sixteen in the league is good numbers and especially when you consider he had ten league goal involvements in 21 games last season as well (although I can't fully get behind the assist stat as you could tap a two yard pass to someone who then smashes one in from forty yards and get that classed as an assist). I've never been Murphy's biggest fan, I still think he's very limited when he has to think, but he seems such a great lad that you have to be happy for him and it's impossible to argue with the numbers he's putting up at the moment to go along with the graft he's always put in. I still believe we will be looking to replace him, but it's clearly no the easy job that it looked like a few year ago.

I had my hopes on Jimmy Nail doing Big River and Ain't no Doubt. Maybe Ant and Dec will do Let's Get Ready To Rumble?

Decent apart from that god awful accent and the fact that they showed themselves up when talking about the 'Saudi money'. They clearly couldn't care one bit about where the money came from, they were just pissed off that we (and Forest) had money to spend like they had been able to for years because of Littlewoods. I

Wasn't last night in effect the same match (ie the one before the cup final) where Pope got sent off trying to do the same thing against Liverpool and ball dying in front of him and him handling it? I certainly had flashbacks of that watching it last night. Pope is without any doubt better at sweeping than Dubs.

In general I agree, but in that instance we'd fucked about with it so much, if we'd Allison in goal he'd still have had the fuck pressed out of him.