It would help with this stance of your club hadn't spent the last week trying to claim you've been badly done to because Suarez has been denied a bunch of pens he should have got.



Well part of the problem there is that Paul Scholes was some kind of national treasure and it was just a joke that he couldn't tackle. A problem that Liverpool fans helped to foster because of their mutual masturbation club with United fans.



Suarez is clearly part of the problem in that he is clearly willing to dive when it suits. He hasn't helped himself with today's ridiculous effort.



I dislike Tottenham about half as much as I dislike Liverpool, so that's still quite a lot. But I don't think Bale has done too much wrong there. He braced himself for collision after nicking the ball away because it looked like he was going to get kicked. With the speed he was going as soon as his stride was altered he was going down. The keeper then halted his kicking motion before impact so it looks like Bale has just blatantly dived when really it was just the combination of factors that caused it.

For me, I'd have just waved play on and left them to it.

The clip doesn't show the aftermath, but what were the responses from the players? If Bale got up and started saying he'd been clipped then he'd have earned himself a yellow. If he just said he braced himself then there's no issue.

brad guzan laughed at him

Our club has rightly complained about the standard of officiating in our games. It's frustrating that Suarez dove today, as I said it was embarrassing, but that shouldn't alter any future decision a referee should make, just as not giving them the most obvious one against Norwich the other week shouldn't influence them.

I rated Scholes as a player but the embarrassing ignorance towards his tackling was/still is a joke. This approach seems to be taken towards Stoke too, only they're not as popular.

Suarez should have been booked for his dive today and that should have been the end of it. The funny thing is he's been booked for it a couple of times this season and I don't think he actually dove, yet today when he did it wasn't penalised. If referees go into a game believing that someone is a diver and they'll ref them as so, they shouldn't be refereeing. Simple as, really.

See, your point on Bale I kind of agree with. Players should jump out of the way and do everything to avoid contact at all costs, but referees refuse to give decisions without contact, which is the sort of thing Stoke expose. I don't know how the players reacted to the Bale thing, but I do know plenty of fans that criticise Suarez for going down/avoiding bad challenges. Saddened done it the other day. Suarez came on against Udinese, a bad challenge came his way, contact was made but he got out of the way in a manner that seemed to exaggerate contact. Regardless of exaggeration, it was a bad foul but fans and referees refuse to see it that way, largely because they're utterly deluded because of things they seen "thirty years ago".

What makes people like Pulis an utter c*nt is the way he comes out and comes out with sh*te criticising Suarez for falling over, yet his player used Suarez as a surfboard and it's Suarez who should be taking the criticism. He then has the cheek to say players like Suarez are putting pressure on referees, when his talentless bunch are kicking the sh*t out of teams every week and getting away with it. Suarez should have been given a yellow card, quite rightly, but Huth should have been sent off yet he has the nerve to say the ref should be giving bookings out to us. Horrible coach.

Pulis did it to us a few games ago. Although he did have a point with most of the claims.

Ivanovic made a stupid dive, nearly as bad as Suarez's.

Luiz made a horrible challenge. An orange challenge that could have been either. If it was a Stoke player Pulis would have been saying yellow, because it was Luiz he was saying it should have been red.

But I think Oscar was booked for a supposed dive when when a Stoke player was coming in to chop him. It was similar to Bale's today, only the defender was straight in front of him. The defender dived in, nowhere near the ball, but stopped right before contact. Oscar braced himself, there literally was nowhere he could go, went over, and the ref booked him for supposedly diving.

Suarez isn't the only one not to get pens. Hazard has got 4 pens I think so far. Each one of them 100% certs. But for some reason refs have stopped giving them even though the fouls are still happening.

The situation with Torres is even worse. Refs seem to be operating on a system where a foul on Torres needs to include a broken leg for him to get a decision.

The last few weeks Pulis has been running his mouth. Partly because Luis, Ivanovic and Suarez have given him easy targets, partly because he knows he will have a willing audience for talking about CFC and LFC players and partly because other managers have given Stoke a heap of this in the past.

After reading LGJM and RBs posts today i now understand them.

I thought they were just one eyed fans of their own team yet their comments on Bales dive are hilarious.

They both think it was |OK for him to dive as he was preparing for contact.

If you are preparing for contact you check your run, jump up to avoid the tackle dont do something you would see tom Daley doing.


The pair of you are really clueless clowns. Your lengthy posts trying to explain or theorise on football related incidents is hilarious. You had no credibility after your posts on Suarez and on Terry and clearly show you have no credibility on any other football related incidents.

If Mourinho is the the special one it is clear both of you two are special in a different way.

You're just too stupid to understand.

Look at the clip. The only reason there isn't a huge collision is because the 'keeper holds his kicking action at the last moment.

Bale and the 'keeper were in a race to get the ball. Bale won the race, but in winning the race it will look to him like he's going to get hit at a 90% angle by the 'keeper.

To me that clip doesn't look like it was Bale diving to try and get the keeper sent off. As I said, it looks like Bale won the race and then instinctively braced for what looked like an inevitable collision.

At the speed Bale was going, if he checks his run then he loses the race for the ball, possibly ends up colliding with the keeper and getting booked for it. And he can't jump because he's already running at the limit.

It's possible that Bale was cheating and trying to dive to get the keeper sent off. But I don't see any proof of that from that clip. I give the benefit of the doubt to both players that they were both involved in a genuine race for the ball and neither tried to cheat the other.

And I think you're too stupid to even begin to understand what I'm on about. I think you're on the "He made no contact with him, so therefore it's a dive" level.

I'm no fan of Pulis or the way he sets his teams up, but this is obviously a case of trying to deflect attention away from his own players. If it was Ferguson or Mourinho, it would be described as 'mind games'.

Err.......yes. Quite easily. Any normal person's response to not getting penalties when they are fouled would be to be more determined and work harder at staying on their feet.

RE: Suarez diving and the baggage that comes with it.

There's an age old story called Peter and the Wolf that Liverpool fans should read first before having a pop at refs. Refs do as good a job as can be expected and when you have charlatans trying to con them even further it's understandable if they find it hard to interpret theatrics correctly. The only way to address that issue is for the player themselves to take responsibility for their own actions. Blaming the ref for not seeing it is the bed you've made and one that you must lie in until others start to believe you. If a player continues to pepper genuine fouls against with what can only be described as cheating lies (looking to win a foul when one hasn't occurred is deliberately misleading and therefore a lie) resets any good work done. Suarez and players like him are to blame not the referees who, we should remember, are trying to do an honest job.

It looked like he got tripped up by a blade of grass.

Strong gust of wind near the ankles?

Nonsense, they're bent and controlled by the Fergie Association..............

Totally agree, and it makes no sense whatsoever for that to be the logical response to not being awarded fouls. The logical response is to stay on your feet at all times possible in order to maximise your chances of a crack at goal, otherwise you're just handing over possession.

Whilst on about Liverpool, where do people think they have to finish for Rodgers to have done a decent job/keep his job for another season?

I agree with most of what you say.

But the problem is in the huge grey area over fouls. If a defender impedes an attacker just enough to cause his team mate to make a clearance that is still a foul. But good luck finding refs that are strong enough to make that decision. They need the player to go down to force them to actually make a decision.

An honest striker is one that defenders will love. They'll just hang all over him all game, knowing that as long as they don't actually cause him to go to ground they'll be able to foul all the time and get away with it. Just look at the ludicrous situation over free kicks into the penalty area. If an attacker looks at a defender the wrong way the refs will instantly give a free kick against him. At the same time if a defender picks up an attacker and carries him into the stand the referee will fail to see anything wrong.

Then there's the issue of players going into challenges as though they are going to clatter into someone and then pulling out at the last minute. That's a foul according to the rules.

Managers then cause more problems with their mind games. Pulis has been on a roll over diving and bad tackles against his side. Don't think he was too bothered by Crouch's hand ball before he scored against Citeh though, and he's quick to defend his players after they've hospitalised another player.

Then we've got the Shearer's, Lawrensen's and the Gray's who are the main voices on refereeing decisions. While they are all ex pro's, they don't really demonstrate that they have any extended knowledge because they've played the game. Have they gained at all from their years of "analysing" the game, or are they basically spouting the same drivel they talked when they first got their paying gig after stopping playing?

Suarez is an awful diver. He's got a rep for it, we've laughed at the videos. But the fact is that he is still the victim of many more fouls against him than he is of winning free kicks by diving. But somehow a defender deliberately fouling him doesn't get classed as ***CHEATING*** but him diving once after been kicked a few times is the worst kind of cheating imaginable.

I don't think City let Johnson go because of his lifestyle, that was an issue a couple of years ago but not recently. I think they just didn't believe he would make it at the very top and he was no longer willing to be a squad player. In cricket parlance Johnson is a flat track bully. He's great against poor full backs in poor teams, but rarely performs against the better full backs. He probably doesn't have enough pace to make it as an out and out winger. He has good touch, a decent pass and an excellent shot and I could see him developing in a more central role. But he's very unlikely to get the opportunities to make that transition at City. A move to a club like Sunderland was probably in his interests and City got a decent fee for him.

I often think that City have reached the end of the road with Balotelli, most recently when sent off at Arsenal. But then he'll put in the sort of performance he did against Germany and you have to think he's worth persevering with for just a bit longer. I think Mancini doesn't want to be the manager that let him go just before he sorted himself out and realised his potential.

Can't remember which game it was, but earlier this season Torres was through on goal, defender just behind him, but Torres was close enough to goal that he wasn't catching him.

The defender clearly tugged at Torres, causing him to lose balance. Torres, off balance, managed to get enough contact to beat the keeper, but not enough contact to score. The defender who had tugged him carried on his run and cleared the ball just before it crossed the line.

Great defending, said the commentators.

But the clearance was only possible because the defender fouled Torres in the first place. Without that illegal contact then Torres would have been free to finish easily (for this example, let's ignore the fact that Torres ATM is just as likely to have smashed it 20 foot wide as score). A top quality ref would have given the foul because Torres was clearly impeded illegally and the defender gained a clear advantage because of that. But I don't think any referee in the PL would give that in real time. I think at a referee's meeting watching the video, every single ref would agree that the defender should have been penalised for the foul.

Another point on Balotelli. Isn't there also the case that the media exaggerate any issue they can anyway? Balotelli was subbed, took exception to it, as many players do, and slunk off to get dressed. Hardly an open and shut case for getting rid. Fergie would have slapped him around the training ground for slighting him, he might have kicked a few boots at his head, but he wouldn't have been binning him for it if he was scoring enough goals to forgive him.

Citeh getting rid of Balotelli would delight Man United right now. Just as the rest of the PL would be peeing their pants with joy if Chelsea came to the lunatic decision of getting rid of Terry and Cole over the kangaroo court verdict.

'The boy who cried wolf' probably more relevant

I don't see how any of that is at all relevant to my post, did you quote the right one?

what has THFC done to upset you as a matter of interest ?

The thing with Balotelli is he's too inconsistent to be relied upon. He invests far, far too much energy into being cool, mysterious and eccentric. If he just concentrated on football for a spell he'd do okay, but as it is now, City can't throw start him in a big match and be confident he'll perform like they can with Aguero and Tevez. He'll never be a regular starter for City, so one wonders why they bother with him? Guidetti that couldn't get a game for them scored 20 in Holland last season and could do the bench job and minor cup rotation just as well. Why pay a 6 figure salary to a ticking timebomb?

You said players should stay on their feet at all times to maximise their chances of a crack at goal. Torres did that, but in doing so was massively off balance and the incident resulted in the ball being cleared off the line.

If Torres had not fought to stay on his feet and gone down then he'd have had a free kick or pen and the defender would have been at risk of a red card. Torres did what he was supposed to do, and because he did he lost out because of it.

The truth is that both defenders and attackers are pushing the rules as far as they can to gain advantage. If a striker attempts to stay on his feet whenever he can defenders will just know that they can push him far more without risking a pen or a booking. A defender who knows the slightest contact on a striker will be risking a pen will be a lot more wary of shoving him off the ball.

Nothing really. In fact, Tottenham have been pretty generous to us in my time.

On reflection, I'd say that my dislike of Tottenham is actually about 10% of my dislike of Liverpool.

Have a look at the context of why I said it. I was specifically replying to the claim that you can't blame Suarez for diving because he's not being awarded penalties when he is legitimately fouled because of his reputation. That makes no sense. If a player genuinely believes he is being victimised and will not be awarded a penalty even when he is fouled, then in those specific circumstances the only sane solution to come up with is to try and make sure you stay upright as much as possible and get your shot/pass off, not to throw yourself at the ground regularly in the hope that you get a dodgy one to balance things out.

At no point was I debating the validity of penalty claims or whether or not a player should need to be upended before they get one.