A big weekend of football:
- Seattle Sounders won the MLS Title for the 2nd time in 4 years. I caught a bit of the game, but couldn't watch it for long because the quality of football is risible. I don't think they even play to the level of the Championship in England .
- Is the Premier League a one-horse race now? No, I still think Liverpool have a collapse in them. I think they were very lucky against Man City, who should have had a penalty before Liverpool's first goal.
- It's going to be interesting to see if Leicester and Chelsea can keep up their form as well. Leicester actually look better than they did when they shocked the world and won the whole thing a few seasons ago. And Chelsea have kind of crept up under the radar - actually quite surprised that Frank Lampard seems to have done a good job so far with such a young squad.
- As for Palace, I'll be glad when this string of tough fixtures is finally over with - Man City, Arsenal, Leicester, Chelsea, and Liverpool coming up. I think our season is going to rest on how we do in December and January.
- And let's not forget about "American" football, where the Seattle Seahawks have a huge Monday night game against division rivals and unbeaten San Francisco 49ers. Because the Monday night game starts early evening West Coast time, that should mean a lot of people working from home tomorrow and a much more pleasant commute.
Liverpool - agreed (ref: potential collapse), disagreed on penalty - it wasn't - neither of them were when viewed in real time. PLUS the first handball is: a) a ricochet off Bernard Silva (ricochets are "taken into account") & b). more importantly, a ricochet off THE ARM of Silva so even if Man City had scored, VAR would've chalked it off - so effectively it's a dead ball by the time it hits Liverpool's TAA.
ReplyDeletePalace - You're right, Dec & Jan are super pivotal. The problem is that we simply can't score, which encourages the opposition to be brave & "have a go". Note 33% of our 15 points have come directly via VAR - 3 of them dubiously (Villa & Arsenal). We could still be playing Chelsea now as I write this reply & the score would be "Crystal Palace Nil". Depressing !!
Go Hawks !! Although SF49's look very very strong.
Use of VAR is an absolute farce here in the PL by the way. I look very enviously at how the NFL have got the balance right & it's all about using the process to merely ensure that "the call on the field" is not a stinker.
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