Colly

You're being a tad facetious now. To be utterly clear I don't see that as a clumsy challenge, I see that as Barnes playing a ball and Matic being utterly unlucky in stretching a leg into his standing follow through. That for me is neither excessive force nor intent to injure. To illustrate this further I've just smashed my knee into my coffee table and angrily pushed it over. And that's not a clever metaphor, I actually did (apart from the pushing it over).

I utterly agree with you in the application of intent and feel that in the case of handball it does need to be more prescriptive. In this case however are you arguing that Barnes clearly meant to smash his boot into Matic's shin, because I really can't see that at all. I understand it's horrible when you see that 'style' of impact on one of your players, but this was only ever going to be a bad one if Matic was very very unlucky. Sometimes things are genuinely an accident, and every time I've seen this one bar the initial 'eww' it's looked exactly that.

To go back to this (and to be clear the fact there's no reaction from players around is utterly irrelevant) the rules on a red card for a reckless challenge are all to do with clear intent to injure and excessive force. I think the problem we have these days is making the assumption that whenever a boot collides with a leg in that horrible 'eeurgh, Ben Arfa' way it must absolutely be someones fault, whereas in actual fact sometimes it will happen during the course of play in a contact sport. You see it in professional games, you see it in pub games, I see it playing 7 a side with my unfit mates. For me in this situation there's certainly no excessive force (Barnes is standing until the first contact is made) and his intent was to play the ball which he did. It looked horrendous in slow motion, but Matic certainly wasn't injured by it as shown by the speed he popped back to his feet. Horrible accident, but not a red for me. The earlier one on Ivanovic is maybe a yellow but the reaction to that is embarrassing. This isn't an anti-Chelsea rant, they absolutely should've had two penalties, but there's a real issue with villifying a situation that doesn't need to happen. No doubt the media storm will see a retrospective punishment, but I hope the league at least try to analyse it properly.

Barton's ballslap was hilarious.

I love a Danny John-Jules film appearance, whether Lock Stock, Blade 2 or Labyrinth. He's amazing and usually unrecognisable.

Senegal isn't real, it's like the Channel Islands.

Sousa, I'm really sorry. I still don't have a fucking clue.

Am I the only one who thinks the Barnes non-foul is actually just really unlucky? He plays the ball (as in passes, not tackles) and his boot comes up naturally to catch Matic with very little force, it's just the angle of it that looks nasty. It doesn't look particularly malicious. Regardless, Matic was clearly a red card offense.

You can see Perez wanting to do things, I feel sorry for him having to (briefly) be at this club.

I'm almost at the point of 'fuck it, 8 Aguero goals would sort my Dream Team out'. No centre backs on the bench. Doing alright weirdly though. Seems like one of those games where Colback might pop up with one.

Merson saying Cuadrado. Highlight of my day so far.

I've put Arsenal in my acca but that ludicrously attacking team is making me nervous.

Pretty sure none is correct. House rules rule though.

For anyone who cares enough to watch bit didn't care enough to torrent it years ago, Shameless season 4 starts on More4 on Monday. At 1am. Seriously.

It's about Afflecks in videogame farce discussion threads.

I play single player PS3 games that I pinch from my brothers PS+ subscription whilst occasionally trying to teach my 3 year old how to play Mario Kart Wii. I'm so far from gamer culture. Its wonderful.

I liked Argo, does that make me pro or anti-GamerGate?

Pretty much the idea that video gamers are basement dwelling virgins. There were articles pointing out that this stereotype was dead. This made basement dwelling virgins very mad. Surely that identity died with the PlayStation in the mid 90s though? Admittedly the audience was still predominantly male but it certainly didn't leave out gays, blacks or cool kids like me. I've been playing games since a weird black and white thing that played Pong, through Amiga's and various Nintendo and Sony consoles, but I can't say I've ever gone out of my way to have a 'gamer identity' which is probably why I don't get it...

BRIEF TIMELINE: 1. Woman named Zoe Quinn releases game called Depression Quest to some minor acclaim. 2. Quinn's ex-boyfriend points out sordid details, claimed she slept with a reviewer for positive reviews (false). 3. Noted Firefly fuckboy and gun-toting misogynist whackjob Adam Baldwin dubs it HASHTAG GAMERGATE on Twitter while an IRC chat room (yes, really, those ancient things we use during PPVs) starts disseminating Quinn's personal information, calling her house, harassing her relatives, etc. 4. Around the same time, several publications release articles discussing some variation of "the death of the gamer identity" due to the increased presence of women, queer people, and people of color in gaming communities. Reasonable people understand the nuance inherent in "death of an identity." Idiots with no concept of nuance interpret it to mean "WE WANT VIDEO GAMERS TO LITERALLY DIE," begin e-mailing these sites' advertisers. 5. Bafflingly, the same crowd starts going after feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, which basically torpedoes any chance of ever saying it's about JOURNALISM ETHICS. This does not stop anyone from saying it's about JOURNALISM ETHICS. 6. Repeat for six goddamn months. There's a ton of levels of this particular shit salad that I haven't even gotten into. Like, that comic above probably makes very little sense if you haven't been following this from the beginning. There's just so much bullshit going down that it's hard to sum up, but that's roughly how it got started. Thanks Sous. I still don't really get the terminology (is Gamergate the event or the weird cause these oddballs are following?), and can't even grasp this 'identity as a gamer' thing (wasn't there a girl smashing SMB3 at the end of The Wizard? Two decades ago), but I'm marginally more clued in. It feels silly.

Mario outranks all captains. Everyone knows that.

I think I just struggle with the whole concept despite vaguely getting the history. Are the 'pro-gg' people the mysogynistic lot? I honestly can't grasp what the argument is whatsoever.

:/

I just read the comments. I've previously read the wiki article. I've read Graeme Linehan's views on it. I'm still none the wiser as to what the fuck is going on.

It just looks like all the reasons that I don't read replies to famous peoples Twitter posts.

It was pretty funny to watch though. Henderson had no control of the situation whatsoever, and Sturridge wasn't helping. What happened in the Kiev game by the way? Someone got sent off, they made a sub, then the sub was sent off three minutes later. Did anyone catch the highlights?