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My guess is that the EPL wanted to wait until it was more established and kinks had been ironed out before introducing it.

From what I have seen at the World Cup, in the Champions League and in some of the cup competitions here they do get it right more often than wrong and it hasn't ruined games I've been watching as a neutral. Even if there's still room for error it cuts out the absolutely ridiculous ones like in our match on Friday night, a player scored an offside goal with his hand and it stood.

We've had a string of bad referee calls go against us over the last 5 or 6 games, just imagine that cost us promotion. As well as the obvious TV money we wouldn't get, money that we'll be putting into the club's infrastructure as well as squad, we'll have to sell our better players and we'd undoubtedly be in a weaker position next season. Poor refereeing shouldn't be able to affect a club in that dramatic a way.

I do think VAR should work like video ref in rugby. ie the refs explain to the crowd what they're looking at but that would never happen.

Yeah, I've been a bit worried about that. As we're likely getting promoted we'll have VAR next season in the Premier League, will be interesting to see what it's like live. Hope the thought that the goal could get ruled out doesn't ruin the raw emotion of it.

That being said we get screwed over a lot more than we screw in the Premier League. This should even that out a bit.

Everything's fine.

not your european exploits but your home division, i looked at your league the other day and thought to myself how exciting it looked compared to ours at the moment.

we're just smashing our division. i totally wasn't even getting twitchy as we drew against a relegation threatened side yesterday evening.

Get your litterbox ready

Thanks.

Nuclear Throne.

Yeah I hear you can play as the Scots in Civ, looks fun. Can you play as Lusitania?

No, my old laptop can't handle games very well. I've essentialy played the same game for 4 years now. That said I've never been great at rts games.

Nelson Oliveira helped put the final nail in our local rival's relegation coffin today, and of course he runs to celebrate in front of their fans. lol


Last season Norwich, Ipswich and Leeds all finished on the same amount of points in middtable. A year later and two of those are in with a great chance of going up and the other is bar a miracle going down.

Best bit about Ipswich going down is that they hired one of our old managers to try and save them. A manager who is literally in our hall of fame, presumably we have to put him in again now.

It's certainly nice to see academy grown players making their way into your first team, especially if that player has been right through the age groups. I think a lot of young talent is wasted through lack of opportunity in first teams. Like when a talented 18 year old is kept around a youth setup for a couple more years instead of being given a chance to progress, or loaned out to a poorer side in a lower division. Sure some players can shine whilst away on loan but I don't think it's always the best environment for a young player. Even worse when you se players getting loaned out 4, 5 or even 6 seasons in a row.

Again since our new sporting director came in we've gone even further towards the youth development route, we kind of had to because we ran out of Premier League money. We raised £5m through a bond which has gone into upgrading our training ground and we've been basically dominating the region when it comes to coaching in schools. Fans of our local rivals, Ipswich Town, are pretty annoyed as Norwich are now coaching in Ipswich schools. lol

I think I remember Seferovic from the World Cup. To be honest I do love a grafter up front, although I suppose you guys at Benfica are more used to something a bit more technical. Our Pukki is a bit of a weird striker, he's all clever runs, finishing and hard work but he lacks the 2 main things that teams in England tend to look for, physical strength/ability to hold the ball up or searing pace.

Yeah, lots of cup draws go like that, right across the world. Coincidence or football mafia, doubt we'll ever know.

Coincidentally our squad has gone from one of the oldest to one of the youngest since we appointed our new sporting director. Current back 4 consists of a 19 year old, a pair of 21 year olds and the oldest player is 26. Obviously in a much different position to Benfica within our respective football pyramids but it makes sense financially. If you can keep winning in the league and remain competitive in Europe with a young side then it's obviously a good thing.

I know I've spoken about him a lot already our Finnish striker is just incredible. Channeling a bit of Dennis Bergkamp in our last game, honestly I doubt there's a second tier club scoring goals as good as us this season. 4 goal of the month contenders in 1 game here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYrizKnkoxg I've also said this before but Pukki means 'goat' in Finnish. Not bad for a free transfer.

Won our game 4 - 0 today, became the league's top scorers, our striker became the league's top scorer.........and we missed another pen. Never seen anything like this.

That's the point though, missing 5 out of 6 when the global hit rate is 83% is surprising. We've had a few different pen takers, all of which are technically good strikers of the ball. Only one of them has a sketchy record in the past. Funny thing is all of the pens that have been missed have been hit really lightly and basically telegraphed to the keepers. Last season they were scoring them fine. Suppose it might be one of those things that sorts itself out once one goes in.

Yeah, Germany have won all but 1 of their penalty shootouts at major tournaments, as West Germany they had a great record too. Multiple wins against England over the years so that's why we have a bit of a complex. We have a 1 sided rivalry with the Germans here in England.

The top 3 clubs in Turkey always have fun squads. Full of good players that are not quite past it but certainly on the decline, players that go off your radar for a few years and then reappear, random south americans and asians. Also usually quite a lot of players that have failed in top leagues but must have amazing agents because they often end up ther on mega deals.

I'm not a massive CL follower (not until we're in it) but those 3 clubs do have notorious reputations, I doubt Benfica are the only club with such a poor record on their soil.

Completely random but I saw some pretty interesting stats earlier on, the global conversion rate of penalty kicks in football is 83%. Somehow Norwich have managed to miss 5 of 6 of theirs this season, a team of Germans managed by Germans none the less.

You'd think that would possibly indicate weak mentality but they've also gotten the most points from losing positions and scored the most goals in the last 15 minutes of games.

Gotta love statistical anomalies.

Blimey, think our record win is only 10-2.