The Rolling Football Thread, season 2023-24

[DuncinToffee]

Football fans join in to share the joy, the heartache and VAR frustration ⚽

The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

That sounds scary @Tarkan i hope you feel better soon.

Tarkan

Take care @Tarkan 💛

Hope you're ok@Tarkan

Five spectacular goals - goal of the month will be tricky!
De Bruyne was outstanding- that pass for Bobb's goal in stoppage time was unreal.
I really thought that Newcastle were going to at least draw and they deserved a point.

Thanks everyone. I'll be fine but need to see what the doc says and whether surgery is something I'll need for it now and that's scarier to me than having the attacks. 🙈 Will see what happens. 🥰

Take care @Tarkan. ❤️

All the best Tarkan.

All the best @Tarkan 💐

Watching Man U v Spurs.

Watched Everton v Aston Villa earlier, boring match but a good point in the end.

Not sure why it took 5 minutes for VAR, both sets of fans were singing that VAR sucks.

It started snowing on our way to the Gladbach (vs Stuttgart) match today, not too much but it was flippin' freezing.

We scored at 21 seconds and 20 minutes - but last time we were 2-0 up against them they came back and won 2-3. Not this time, they pulled one back and then we scored in the 92nd minute to win. Phew.

carrying on from the throwing chocolate coins on the pitches after a 12 minute silence, all the ultras groups appeared to have agreed on, for the first 5 minutes of the 2nd half both sets of fans were complaining about the Deutsche Fussball Liga.

Saints 20 games without a loss. Sorry Sheffield Wednesday Nil.

Feel the heartbreak Eddie.

Thanks again for the good wishes. I'm feeling a good bit better although I still haven't spoken to the doc. DH has some horrible sinus thing right now so I've been focused on looking after him.

So I decided today I needed something to cheer myself up and I've bought my first Panini sticker album in probably around 30 years. I had that wonderful moment of thinking "I'm an adult now, I could probably afford to fill it" and then I got it home and saw how many stickers it takes (684 if you were wondering). There goes all my money then. 🤣

So pleased that you are feeling better @Tarkan , but we need to look after ourselves as well as our families.

I hope your DH feels better soon too.

I remember the match attax years with DS, better not to think about the money wasted spent on them. He loved them though.

@DuncinToffee Oh God, I relate - the amount of money one of my DC wasted on those wretched things...!

Premier league's Masters and Parry were giving evidence today at the Parliamentary Select Committee

The chair of @DCMS end the meeting with…

“If I were at a Pompey game, and you two sat here were referees, we’d be getting to the point where we would be shouting “you don’t know what you’re doing”

Masters also said the words 'small clubs' out loud.

I've never bought stickers, but whenever a world or european cup is on, lots of supermarkets here have Panini-type stickers that you get for, say, every 5 euros you send. I used to have some in the office.
One of my colleagues, who has no clue about football, said "do you want this one? probably not, it's not an English or German player. Or Yann Sommer."

It was Graziano Pellé who i had A Thing about after seening a short interview with him on Grandstand (or something) in his Southampton years saying how he was good at ballroom dancing because he used to partner his sister at competitions. I still have those stickers somewhere (never got my Yann Sommer tho)

Enjoy your panini sticker book @Tarkan. I had a few as a kid, loved the thrill of opening a pack and seeing a shiny!

We are in the Match Attax stage now, 10 year old DS and his mates are obsessed with them and enjoy trading after school. He asked for a few of the older players (101 Pele, Cryuff, Maradona) for Christmas, managed to get them on ebay but they weren't cheap so they are kept in a frame in his room to preserve them! Dread to to think what it will have cost come the end of the season.

I've honestly had so much fun putting my first few sticker packs into the album. 😁

And what made it more magical for me is that if it wasn't lined up properly and not too much was stuck down then you can just lift it off and it doesn't rip the paper or the sticker! That was a wonderful feeling after a childhood full of shaky hands and very squint stickers/ripped pages. 🤣

DH has started doing a partworks of a Lancaster so he's going to collect it from the newsagents every week then pick up 10 packs for me every time he's in and that'll be our fun Friday night at home together. 😁

Looking forward to watching West Ham tonight too.

I really shouldn't have said I was looking forward to this match should I? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Hot on the heels of Dom Calvert-Lewin's red card being overturned, Howard Webb has now admitted that Liverpool should have received a penalty in the match v Arsenal for Martin Odegaard's handball. Honestly, before VAR I think we'd all have minor gripes about things like this and then move on, because we accepted human error was just part and parcel of the game. The issue is that in both these cases, the VAR official made the wrong call (and in Calvert-Lewin's case, the original call by the ref was actually correct). Given VAR is trumpeted as eliminating lots of human errors, and so has raised our expectations in terms of accurate decision-making, it's so frustrating when it instead compounds the very thing it was meant to reduce.

I just listened to the VAR commentary on the Onana handball against Man City. It's just ridiculous (as is the handball law).

We spend more time talking about VAR decisions now than the actual football, it's a farce.

For the first time in 4.5 years, we have scored from a free kick and the game is not televised