Premier League 2023/24

[Naitch]

@stokeriño I did recently see a LinkedIn post that Chelsea are looking for a new Head of Performance Medicine, so hopefully they'll finally sort it out.

[stokeriño]

Once upon a time LinkedIn suggested I might be interested in working for Tottenham Hotspur and it's been dead to me ever since.

[lanky316]

Missed opportunity, could have done a Pochettino and brought them down from the inside.

[stokeriño]

Unfortunately, bringing Tottenham down would have required me to invent a way to turn their trophy haul into negative figures, and I'm not sure the laws of physics accommodate such things.

[Lineker]

Quote

The Newcastle midfielder Sandro Tonali has been charged with misconduct in relation to alleged breaches of the Football Association’s betting rules.

Tonali is alleged to have breached FA rule E8 50 times by betting on matches between 12 August 2023 and 12 October 2023. The 23-year-old has until 5 April to respond.

In October last year, Tonali was suspended for 10 months, fined €20,000 and ordered to partake in an eight-month course of therapy to address his issues after reaching a plea bargain following an investigation into illegal betting conducted by the Italian Prosecutor’s Officer and the Italian Football Federation (FIGC).

“Newcastle United acknowledges a misconduct charge received by Sandro Tonali in respect of alleged breaches of FA betting rules,” read a club statement. “Sandro continues to fully comply with relevant investigations and he retains the club’s full support. Due to this ongoing process, Sandro and Newcastle United are unable to offer further comment at this time.”

 

[Colly]

That came out on the same day the club announced this NFT crypto bullshit. The sport is broken.

 

[Szumi]

With how much football is in bed with betting companies and sketchy ass crypto and NFT grifts, I'm over pretty much all the rules about players betting. Just give me one rule: you can't place bets on you/your team to lose/do something bad. I don't even care if you bet on your own team to win a match at this point. Players are out there trying to win already as it is.

The FA and the Premier League are complete hypocrites with sports betting.

[gunnar hendershow]

I'm basically of the mindset that the only difference now is we're able to catch guys who are betting since how visible and above-board it all is. People were placing bets for years and we were none the wiser, now that culture has moved into more public waters and the same people are doing it but it's so easy to identify them.

[METALMAN]

That seems a bit US-centric to me. UK has had (legal, regulated, widespread) high street bookies for millions of years. The fact that back then your only option was to go to the bookies meant that if you went people would know and the public aspect and the shame of it played a part in keeping levels of gambling relatively low. 

Before internet gambling there was an ick factor to it which (sadly) has mostly dissipated since. Doing it on your phone makes it far more private which gets rid of the shame factor and makes it far easier to do it.

Also prior to the internet offering limitless betting opportunities on all kinds of nonsense the majority of football gambling happened through the pools which involved small amounts of money and was  pretty harmless.

[Colly]

Football, eh?

[stokeriño]

Classic Chelsea performance once again, at home to 2nd-worst team in the league...

* Under fire immediately as game starts with incessant Burnley attacks

* Scrape a soft penalty to end the first half 1-0 up and with Burnley down to 10 men

* Concede equaliser immediately after the restart

* Hit 30-odd shots straight at the Burnley keeper while they force fingertip saves/hit the woodwork at the other end

* Go 2-1 up only to again concede straight away (losing a header off a corner with a man advantage, naturally)

* Gusto taken off possibly injured because lol

* Two points dropped and I presume Poch will say something about the process in his interviews

[stokeriño]

Chelsea's first-half form: Champions League. Chelsea's second-half form: relegation.

Insanity.

[Adam]

Yeah, but what if all your shots that hit the woodwork actually went in?

[stokeriño]

28 minutes ago, Adam said:

Yeah, but what if all your shots that hit the woodwork actually went in?

Pfft, the real question is, what if all the shots that we rolled tamely into the goalkeeper's arms went in.

[Colly]

1 hour ago, Adam said:

Yeah, but what if all your shots that hit the woodwork actually went in?

I was genuinely tempted to post the same thing...

[stokeriño]

To be clear: in no way was I suggesting that Chelsea are close to being good, or deserve to be higher up the table, or whatever the woodwork thing was originally meant to be about. I'm more wondering exactly what kind of stupor Poch is inducing in his half-time team talks.

[DavidMarrio]

He's telling them not to get complacent like on the old FMs so obviously the players get a cob on and get complacent

Followed by a Jekyll and Hyde performance team talk after the match

[Gazz]

Poch did say that 'all the data' pointed to that Chelsea should be fourth in the table. Maybe he just forgot to turn the page where the second half statistics were.

[Colly]

Don't know if anyone picked up yesterday, but there's a new directive that ballboys aren't allowed to give players the ball anymore, they have to just put it on those cone things and the players have to collect it. Classic PL thing of fixing something that didn't really need fixing that confused the life out of some players and added even more time to every goal kick.

[Captain Kirk]

55 minutes ago, Colly said:

Don't know if anyone picked up yesterday, but there's a new directive that ballboys aren't allowed to give players the ball anymore, they have to just put it on those cone things and the players have to collect it. Classic PL thing of fixing something that didn't really need fixing that confused the life out of some players and added even more time to every goal kick.

It was to protect them from an Eden Hazard comeback.