Irritated to see that a twunt set off a yellow flare when we scored our first goal, only a few seats away from me (or at least that's where it ended up). Up close, the smoke was unpleasant and you wonder how it might have affected any asthma sufferers. You could see the police & stewards spending the rest of the half working out who it might have been and at half time led someone away from the area, a young, wiry dark-haired beardy bloke. If he was the culprit, about time he was caught & hopefully banned. I saw the flare, bigger than I imagined, about the size of a small aerosol. Makes a mockery of the effectiveness of searches on away fans these days, last night's was more thorough than most with a scan and then a thorough pat-down. The twunt must have hidden the flare down his pants, clearly there is nothing else down there!
Ake's arm was up like a policeman stopping traffic. The ball was going towards the top corner. Penalty.
Where to start with this! Still, it sounds like you enjoyed your thorough pat-down, so the night wasn't completely spoiled for you.
It will be interesting what DG makes of it on Ref Watch, although he always tries his best to back the match official, which devalues his opinion somewhat. However, if he does decide it was a penalty, then it was a 100% one. I no longer know what is and what is not a penalty. It's nothing to do with the actual incident, but it's totally down to the context of the match, who you are and who you are playing, whether it's given. Sounds cynical, but I honestly believe that's how it is and you see this play out every week in EPL matches. Seriously, Michael Oliver giving those two Liverpool penalties last week really underlines it. Mind you, talking of Oliver, had he been the official, we might have been given it seeing as he loves a last minute drama. I think DG will contest that the ball was struck too close to Ake, and this is why it was not given.
Record it and fast fwd through the pointless "expert" analysis. Watch the entire programme in 25 mins. That's what i do.
A quick search on the internet suggests he's never played a game at centre back, but in addition to his regular right back slot, he has made a couple of appearances in right midfield and even one at left midfield (must've been during Quique's time at Espanol). Having said that, positions don't mean anything to Watford anyway - we just try and hammer in whatever square peg we fancy into the perfectly round hole.
It was alarming. 25 shots of which 12 were on target. Conversely, we had only 3 on target and they all went in. This goes to show the value of a good keeper. Foster made 9 saves, whereas Begovic saved nothing.
Ref Watch was an absolute joke. Only focused on Watford incidents. Talked about the Doucoure foul and everyone agreed it was a red card. Then they talked about Capoue when he swung an arm and caught Fraser. They said it could have been a second yellow but would have been unlucky. They did not show the penalty or the Gosling foul. It's just pathetic all the adverse publicity we keep getting, while conveniently forgetting the other things done by the opposition.
Hmm. How much did Foster have to do compared with Begovic? Did Begovic even touch the ball in 2nd half. Tells us all we need to know.
Unpopular opinion coming up... Bournemouth are my kind of football club. A young English manager arrives at a club with a history of mediocrity. With the help of a wealthy owner, he takes them to the top flight where he plays entertaining attacking football and improves players who were with him in the lower divisions. He establishes his club in the top flight despite a small stadium with no real potential to expand. When Graham Taylor did this for Watford from 1977 to 1987, it was the best thing ever. No Watford fan would deny that. So - just because we've been there and done that - it would be churlish not to acknowledge what a brilliant thing has happened at Bournemouth. This isn't to say I like them. When I see Eddie Howe's cherubic demeanour I see a mask that hides pure evil. The evil is coaching his players to fake and cheat for advantage. It has been working for years - and it winds me up. But this isn't much different from Graham Taylor being accused of playing "long ball" football - which worked and wound other fans up. It exploited what brings success in football just as Bournemouth's faking and cheating does. Thirty years on, I still feel the urge to defend GT's approach, and I'm sure Bournemouth fans will do the same for Howe's approach forever. Same thing. Fair enough. Yesterday, I went to the game at the Vitality Stadium - the first time I'd been to Boscombe since 1995. On arrival, I wanted to deride the club for being tiny - for the dissonance of Premier League football being played on the edge of a park in a sleepy seaside suburb. It felt ridiculous. Laughable. But then I stopped to compare. What happened 30 years ago under Elton and GT in a dull and declining town was similarly ridiculous. But it wasn't laughable to me. For me, it really was the best thing ever. And the dissonance of a sleepy suburb sustainably hosting the high-profile hype of the Premier League - when cities like Leeds, Sunderland, Derby, and Nottingham fail - struck me as the kind of underdog insolence that, instinctively, I love. So I get it now. I don't like Bournemouth at all but, in truth, they're my kind of club. They're the kind of club I HAVE loved supporting the whole of my life. They're us, 35 years ago. But I can't allow myself to finish with such charitable thoughts. They're Bournemouth. They've got Eddie Howe. So let's not say they're us, 35 years ago. Let's say we're 35 years ahead of Bournemouth.
Don't ever recall GT encouraging gamesmanship, blatant diving and trying to get opponents sent off. That was never my 'kind' of club 35 years ago...so I'm not sure where you get the comparison from.
Yes they are a small team establishing themselves in the top league like we did in the 80s. It's a great achievement. BUT playing "long ball" football is not the same as cheating. Bank rolled by some distant, disconnected investor. They are most certainly NOT "..us, 35 years ago". Now go and wash your mouth out.
Overheard a steward at the end, apparently the guy pulled out another one, but when he went to let it off the camera down the front happened to be right on him and he was looking right at it! Awkward...
It still has to be intentional/ deliberate under the handball law. Ball to hand.. hand to ball does not feature, except in the minds of some pundits who played the game two decades ago.
I've done this for years, ever since the days of the 'Drivel Brothers' (Hansen & Lawrenson), but I'm on the brink of giving up on it. The match edits are so short, even for 'big' games, that they almost always give a poor impression of the overall game. The Chelsea game was a good example: MotD would never show any of the first 15 minutes of the second half when Chelsea were rattled by our pressure because it didn't result in any concrete 'highlights'. The Sky Match Choice edit is much better.
Yes we get about 6-7 mins on MoTD which is short but perfect for dumping them all onto a DVD or two of the season which I do each year. The Sky 30 mins highlights (about 20 mins of footy between the adverts) is perfect for keeping/rewatching the best victories.
But isn't having your hand in an unusual position (like above your shoulders) now considered to be "deliberate" handball like this example ?
Maybe more like a modern Wimbledon FC? Play dirty & don't have a local megastar. The bass player from Blur who now makes cheese is the nearest I can think of.
Why can't deeney just keep his mouth shut? He plays well once in a blue moon and then opens his big fat gob and gets either a) a ban or b) pocketed in the next few games. He's a moron.
Deeney won’t get a ban, if he does, then it makes a mockery of the rules. Austin comes out with all his drivel after we were denied a blatant pen and they would have been down to 10 men. He goes ballistic for a whole minute smashing the ref, calling for VAR, and gets nothing. Deeney just says the ref has bottled it, it’s a penalty and Gosling should have been sent off because he tried to do clevs, which he did. Deeney spoke nothing but truth. Nowhere near as bad as what Austin said.
