The Doctor

Ricky as a number eight is nice, looked reasonable enough there v Leeds. Interested to see how he managed it with three strikers on the bench.

I'm about 50% of the way through the story and I am really enjoying it. Literally my one complaint so far is they've cut out the ability to relisten to JJJs ramblings and the Danikast, and they cut off if you get close to the random crimes which have quite a wide trigger radius for spiderman to make a comment about it.

I'm a proponent for VAR, always have been. Currently in England it does not work, there's no arguing that, but you look why and 90% of the time it's because it's still a current referee behind the monitor and current refereeing standards are non existent, covering each others backs at a peer to peer level (Mike Deans comments about not referring a red card incident to Anthony Taylor to avoid him getting more grief) to the complete lack of accountability at any level for referees (Taylor getting just sent to one game in the championship and then getting a big 6 match just after a shocking performance). VAR enhances good refs and makes everything worse with bad refs, and ultimately I'd rather have it and overhaul refereeing in this country than just stick with the useless shit we know

I mean he gets up and gets in Summervilles face, that by the letter of the law is a booking. What the ref got wrong in that scenario is punishing Hamza and Summerville equally for the afters and letting the violent conduct from Summerville to kick it off slide

It wasn't. The league has goalline tech, just not VAR. If it was over the line it would have been given

No, same season in 2019/20. Vardy was on 8 successive games in a row scoring, we won 8 in a row then drew 1-1, pukki and a krul own goal. The one where Rodgers subbed Iheanacho off for not returning the ball after Norwich cleared it out during an injury

Sunderland had 13 shots to our 8 in that game (3 v 5 on target), Leeds had 11 shots to our 10 (6 v 1 on target). The disparity is not that Leeds created more decent openings than Sunderland, but that they've got better forwards than Sunderland at getting shots on target and we were incredibly profligate in our shooting last night. In both games, Mads only really had one save that was anything other than routine to make. Leeds were no better than Sunderland going forward, defensively perhaps although again, more shots from us v Leeds than v Sunderland, we just got the breaks and showed the quality in the Sunderland game and didn't get the breaks or show enough quality in certain positions last night. Sunderland we won but were a dodgy penalty call v Faes and a one v one save from Mads v Clarke from losing, yesterday we lost but were a crossbar and defenders switching on at a corner from winning. Both games were pretty even and could have gone either way

Must have been absurdly good to be allowed to just skip league one

Oh **** off Rooney you granny shagger

Bounce back, Yunus or McAteer in for Casadei please

If he's willing to accept a pay cut and be a back up perhaps, I just think he's not really premier league standard (yes he played a bit for Southampton but that's a defence that conceded 9 in a single game in two successive seasons) and given the amount of reinforcements we'll need, the freed up wages and squad spaces are more valuable in the prem than he would be

Nah, the defence was fine aside from ball watching at the corner, like Mads had nothing more than a couple of pearollers to pick up. The problem last night was the central attacking 3 of Vardy, KDH and Casadei

Leeds did start to double up on him but even early on both wingers stopped trying to take players on despite having the fullbacks on toast first half. Looked like they'd been told to focus on ball retention when both are wildcards who need to be given free reign to just run at players

Last 10 minutes he very much did. The substitution where their centre back distracted him for a chat while James took an eternity to walk off was particularly egregious.

Running alongside a player is not contact in any reasonable sense when talking about if something is a foul. Change it to minimal if you want to be pedantic but it was a clear dive and he should have been booked for that or bare minimum the dissent after the ref ignored his dive

The one where Rutter threw himself down with no contact, aka a bookable offence

Basically the same as every other ref, no desire to actually enforce the new anti-time wasting directives. Still not sure how Summerville didn't walk given its a red for violent conduct even before they square up but that's the linos fault. Not the worst we've had all season but that's very much a "kingdom of the blind" kind of deal because he didn't really have control of the game

The simple answer is the number 8s make or break this system, and with Wilf out...

I mean, goal v Cardiff aside, has he really impacted any game yet? Can't dine off a debut goal forever or Danny Cadamateri would be a club hero

it's a joke

for a fairly bulky bloke he gets knocked off the ball easily and players go past him like he isn't there

He's clearly memeing on Maddisons tweet after Southampton (?) last season

Can't really argue with 13 wins from 15, plan A is clearly good enough 86% of the time, but today did expose how dogmatic we are. Byram on a booking and getting skinned every time, no desire to get Fatawu driving at him. 1-0 down on 85 minutes, still slow and patient build up play rather than upping the tempo

I'd have Hamza and McAteer over him without a thought. Every game he's anonymous

Someone in the match thread said he's this season's Soumare and I think that's accurate. Clearly a player in there but the application either isn't there or he's not able to get to the pace of the English game, runners went past him so easily every single time for a relatively big bloke