Luton won't win the league - Premier League 2023/24

Yeah I'm not saying result would have been any different without Palmer, Chelsea have lost plenty times without him playing - but thinking where they'd be in the table without him

harry kane last season

Xp oh for sure. But when you spend a billion pounds in transfers, you do expect at least one to go right

Chelsea (and Palmer) have also gotten a disproportionate amount of penalties this season. They're way out in front with 12 to Liverpool and Arsenal's 9.

I mean he still has to score them but it's strange considering how crap in general they've been

Also I was not aware that Spurs have only been awarded a single penalty

i know ye think im insane about the refs but *clears throat*

the referees, pundits and fans in england go into each match with a melange of interconnected biases and notions surrounding what each team and/or individual player is going to be allowed to do, factors taken into account include:

- the refs are on record as not fancying the trouble that comes from important calls against yr uniteds, chelseas, liverpools, now cities (debated the correct pluralisation here) influenced by the club overall and entire aggressively and directly making huge deals about any perceived injustice and always doubling down from players on pitch through coaches and the executive for followups and fines etc

- arsenal are delicate flowers and a special case. spurs never fight anything in any sense.

- there are teams and players that are expected to mix it and in england in particular my theory is that refs, pundits build this in and they get away with several instances of clear foul play, or the benefit of the doubt in an orange card situation, where a retaliation from a fancy dan spurs player (or, for instance and to placate other team fans reading here, historically beckham, ronaldo) is always punished to the maximum instantly in disapproval of petulance, retaliatory vengeance or simply because the ref knows how stoke play in order to compete and is applying his own catch-up balancing logic

- during games a ref simply gets it into his head that a set of fans or players has annoyed him and will spend the rest of his day fucking you over, thats yr lot tough shit

are any of the above corruption?

yeah, the collymore defence of "show me the cheques" is bullshit when the function is to apply rules evenly and the rules arent being applied evenly, during games or over the course of a season.

spurs have been kicked up and down the country since var fuck up against liverpool and have been booked first in 90% of our games

i dont watch much football outside of those cunts anymore but ive seen brighton, forest in particular get nothing in a streak that mocks "it all evens out" and the standard of reffing is frankly the worst aspect of an increasingly shitty sport overall, given the increase in their ability to actually identify and make the right calls vs what existed when clattenburg had to score uniteds winners himself back in the day the porkheaded cheating cunt

the refs are on record as not fancying the trouble that comes from important calls against yr uniteds, chelseas, liverpools, now cities (debated the correct pluralisation here) influenced by the club overall and entire aggressively and directly making huge deals about any perceived injustice and always doubling down from players on pitch through coaches and the executive for followups and fines etc

FYI the last couple of Utd managers, and in particular Ten Hag, are absolutely crap at this. We don't make a peep about bad decisions against us and in fact, any vaguely questionable decision that goes Utd's way is moaned about ad nauseum in the media for weeks and even months after (cf. Onana against Wolves). Most recently, there was absolute outrage about Coventry's correctly ruled-out winner on the weekend. And not a fucking word about the very dodgy penalty they got to make it 3-3

tldr Utd are a now a midtable team and not the all-powerful bogeyman that ruined your childhood

i agree with that i was just furious while typing that out so nuance be damned

another nuance i omitted covers the interesting case of romero, a thug who is so widely flagged as a thug while playing for spurs that its absolutely a dice roll as to whether refs will correctly punish him or not in any given instance of attempted murder

if one were to try to game the ascent of a big club by reverse applying what we suspect to be true here:

watch villa

getting away with murder against us at least since gerrards time, it must mean something

it has to, otherwise what are we even doing here *scatters various folders and papers across desk*

anyway-

fuck the pundits and print media who are clutching their pearls at forest, not only are the club 100% right to do what they did but they should play this out with maximum resolve and force the points deduction and whatever else in order to underline the ridiculous hypocricy of their treatment of different clubs in covering up their own feckless disinterest in the administration of the rules

cf how arteta, despite arsenal being a smalldick swot club who you are allowed beat up while the house master looks the other way, gets away with saying whatever he wants about it and behaving however he wants on the sidelines.

the entire establishment are a pack of cunts and im only really annoyed that spurs have only benefited three times in my memory, if this is big six ye can fucking keep it at the price

Making Bournemouth look good.

Thank God for Jose Sa

Maybe just sit out the rest of the season

Bournemouth are good!

Heard them saying after they'd cleared the Everton goal as being not offside they were "just checking there's nothing else untoward", very slowly, yeah I bet they are

GET THE FUCK IN

Oh look VAR is probably going to take it away.

If it does, I'm not watching the rest

Fuck this league. I'm out

Man Utd managing to be 2-1 down to Sheffield Utd with something like 83% possession

think the latter have scored every shot they've had on target?

Salah has been cat the last few hames

Salah has been cat the last few games

miaow

either way tbf xp

Klopp ending with a whimper.

walker slides foot first into keeper to knock ball into alvarez in for fourth

blatant pen for brighton just waved away and var confirms

the system gets worse and worse and worse and those implementing cannot even give themselves a win at three nil up

craven dogs

Slot this, Slot that

Liverpool doing a very good impression of last season’s Arsenal.

HWANG

var must be broken

Lol the cheers after play resumed after the goal was such wonderful sarcasm from the fans

TOTI

foul for me

Yeah, it was a little too deliberate, poor refereeing on the field to turn it into a shocking late VAR spectacle if anything

Glad to scrape through that game, glad the lingering spectre of Utd finishing 4th by winning all their remaining games 7-0 has been banished, I wish everyone a very honourable fight for the remaining champions league place and also please lose 5-0 to Arsenal tomorrow cheers

oh done and done, villa have that spot wrapped up- we are piss poor and limping home at this stage

glad the lingering spectre of Utd finishing 4th by winning all their remaining games 7-0 has been banished

I'll be surprised if United win another match this season, to be honest

It was a foul, but it would have been super cool if it wasn't called I reckon

Anyways I can't talk. I woke up and it was 2-0 so I decided to watch the dodgers (very smart decision h.p)

You guys hear about this shohei ohtani bloke? He's like Ronaldo and Messi combined, but Japanese and likeable.

Anyways yeah, put me down for $50 on United not winning another game this season. I like those odds

You must understand that both "Aston Villa failing to finish 4th despite appearing to be a lock for it" and "Manchester United Football Club post-1993" have a certain unshakeable psychological hold over us

You guys hear about this shohei ohtani bloke? He's like Ronaldo and Messi combined, but Japanese and likeable.

Anyways yeah, put me down for $50 on United not winning another game this season. I like those odds

― H.P, Sunday, 28 April 2024 09:23 (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Baseball doesn’t seem like a real thing that still happens and has new stars. To look up this name and see that he is the new Babe Ruth feels like he has resurrected something long forgotten that you only see in movies set in the 1950s. Sometimes I think American culture can’t stop trying to be everywhere and feels inescapable; it’s nice to know I’ve avoided one thing that you guys can keep to yourself.

Not American, but I'll pass on the message

Neanderthal is more than welcome but then he only talks about the Wolves.

Is it my imagination of are there dozens of baseball threads on ILX at the moment?

Yeah but all the yanks are asleep right now

(Sorry sorry I'll head out the way I came)

clearly off and anyway doesnt matter cos we are clearly shakey legged cunts

Apologies for implied Americanness HP

Yr boys darragh, they just keep falling over

Ange out, send him back to Celtic.

Our goal difference to come second this season is going to be ridiculous.

two fouls on the keeper two goals, its an easy game this

If Brighton fail to score against Bournemouth on Sunday, this is going to win the Albion's April Goal of the Month Award by default #BHAFC https://t.co/itUh3m48KG

— We Are Brighton (@wearebrighton) April 26, 2024