The Barclays Premier League Thread 2014/2015

[lanky316]

Probably shouldn't get retrospective punishment, the best argument for any action taken over the incident is a booking. He passes the ball and the late lunging player is caught, I'm not even sure if there's too much that Barnes could have done about it. In the moment he should have been booked for the Ivanovic jump and could have been booked for this so on the day would have gone but you don't get retrospective yellow cards.

I suspect he will get punished for it due to the furore after the event but there really isn't that much in it.

Well I just completely disagree with you then. I thought you were making some argument along the lines of "well it was something that apparently no human being in attendance was capable of seeing, so we can't blame the ref for not seeing it at the time either", but to say that's not a red card at all?

I'm sorry, but years and years of having other red card decisions explained to me has taught me that "being able to do anything about it" doesn't matter either. How often do you hear about a player's "momentum" carrying him through into a red card challenge? To claim otherwise now is to claim that yesterday things worked differently to how they have worked for years and years. Bonkers. Utterly bonkers.

Explain then why it is most certainly a red and the nastiest thing ever?

Take the event for what it is, no names, no clubs just the steps.

1) A player passes the ball

2) B player comes in late to get the ball but mistimes tackle

3) B players lunge takes him in to the already outstretched leg of A

4) B player goes down as A player is already moving on to the next phase of play

5) B player gets up and shoves A player in the back.

It looks painfully simple to me. There's no momentum. There's no dangerous intent. There is a player passing the ball and a coming together which one of the players responds badly to.

It's hardly this incident is it?

[stokeriño]

Whenever I see Jose like this, I think back to when our then-manager Benitez refused to criticise Suarez biting Ivanovic because he preferred to talk about what a great club Liverpool is.

I love this man.

[TCO]

Jose is brilliant and I hope he never goes away!

[stokeriño]

2) B player comes in late to get the ball but mistimes tackle

3) B players lunge takes him in to the already outstretched leg of A

So if the leg of Player A is 'already outstretched', does that mean it doesn't follow through and nearly break the leg of Player B in half?

Let's be clear what we're talking about here.

[9 to 5]

Ben Shepherd aged 5 years during that part.

[lanky316]

The leg is out at near it's maximum stretch (maybe an inch or two more in it). No legs are nearly broken half. You're fabricating an event which provides no context.

[Nerf]

Yeah, Jose has gotten back to love-to-hate this season. Last year he was X-Pac.

[stokeriño]

The leg is out at near it's maximum stretch (maybe an inch or two more in it). No legs are nearly broken half. You're fabricating an event which provides no context.

Yes, "nearly broken in half" was shorthand for "a fucking dangerous impact of studs on human limb with uncertain albeit highly probable risk of serious injury". I apologise for my glibness.

[brenchill]

That Dzeko goal was sublime.

[lanky316]

The leg is out at near it's maximum stretch (maybe an inch or two more in it). No legs are nearly broken half. You're fabricating an event which provides no context.

Yes, "nearly broken in half" was shorthand for "a fucking dangerous impact of studs on human limb with uncertain albeit highly probable risk of serious injury". I apologise for my glibness.

There was no dangerous impact of studs, the centre of the boot makes the contact, there is a chance of stud on shin pad contact with the follow through of the late lunge bought about by the momementum of player B. Player B off Team A receive freekick?

[Baddar]

This seems awkward, as if they're scared to ask Jose anything now.

[stokeriño]

There was no dangerous impact of studs, the centre of the boot makes the contact, there is a chance of stud on shin pad contact with the follow through of the late lunge bought about by the momementum of player B. Player B off Team A receive freekick?

So after you stretch this hypothetical further and further away from the truth, repeating "THERE WAS NO FOUL BY PLAYER A" over and over again, say I relented and said "well in this scenario where you slap down every time I point out a foul by saying NO THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN...then I guess there is no foul". Would that be a moral victory for you?

[lanky316]

I'm commenting on the event, you're not this is the point and it's standard Mourinho. There is no talk on how they fucked up against Burnley it is purely an analysis on an event in which his player has behaved like a complete moron and trying to blame others. It detracts from everything else. The reality is this is a nothing incident, it was a nothing incident until the shove and it's all about detracting from the shove whilst maintaining the "all against us" rhetoric. Who knows, eventually a gust of wind will catch Costa right and the referee will give in since they've been hard done by.

[stokeriño]

Okay.

We shall leave this until the next 'nothing event' somewhere where the player in Matic's position is not so lucky.

[Colly]

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.

[lanky316]

There, I think Colly put elements of it better than I could. I do feel the lack of reaction is telling in that everyone at the scene just saw it as a slight collision (this no action at all) and not much more but that's it in a nutshell.

Incidentally, people get hurt in nothing incidents all the time, it's one of the things about sport. Vossen was stretchered off after not moving for nearly ten minutes yesterday, nothing wrong with what happened to him (it was given as a free kick to the player he collided with) these things can happen.

[stokeriño]

^ The use of the word "intent" (or equally, "deliberate") in pretty much all football rules is never applied properly though. See also, handball decisions. I don't blame anyone for this because determining intent is nigh impossible in any circumstance and it asks too much of anyone to require it.

So in practice the matter of intent hardly ever comes up when red cards are given. "Ooh, his foot caught him late, red card." "Ooh, he lost control in the challenge, red card." Similarly with handballs, "Ooh, arm in unnatural position, handball." Etc. Etc. Etc. Any of those intentional? Nah.

So when it comes to the letter of the law, I'm only expecting it to be shown as much respect as it is week-to-week in all other decisions across the country.

[Colly]

^ The use of the word "intent" (or equally, "deliberate") in pretty much all football rules is never applied properly though. See also, handball decisions. I don't blame anyone for this because determining intent is nigh impossible in any circumstance and it asks too much of anyone to require it.

So in practice the matter of intent hardly ever comes up when red cards are given. "Ooh, his foot caught him late, red card." "Ooh, he lost control in the challenge, red card." Similarly with handballs, "Ooh, arm in unnatural position, handball." Etc. Etc. Etc. Any of those intentional? Nah.

So when it comes to the letter of the law, I'm only expecting it to be shown as much respect as it is week-to-week in all other decisions across the country.

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.

[stokeriño]

It's impossible to know what anyone means to do, but an educated guess would say that Barnes didn't mean to do it at all. A similar guess would say that 99% of all players that get sent off for a late/clumsy/etc. challenge didn't mean it either. But it happened, and they got a red card for it. That is how I understood the game to work.

[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).