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It might be heresy to some but I watched that game last neet & really enjoyed it – the result was a bonus too!!!
as for the play offs – at the end of the day are they really that different from the system in football where the team finishing 3rd in the championship who are often streets ahead of the others (points wise) can get pipped to promotion by the team who finish 6th?However, everyone else, to a man, accepts that he is probably the bext option we had to replace McArthur without changing the whole shape and style of play.personally, in McArthur’s absence, I’d much rather see David Jones given that role.
Whether that’s an indication of how badly I rate Watson over the last season & 5 games or whether it’s because I actually rate Jones I don’t knowIf he’s goign to criticise the ref’s which he has every right to do then he needs to be cleverer about it.
Alex Ferguson, prior to their game against Liverpool, was moaning about the ref’s at Anfield being against them BUT he kept it factual “In all my time at United we’ve had 1 penalty, I can remember it clear as day coz we’ve had that few. So I won’t talk about penalties coz it’s not relevant”. He’s had a whinge but he’s stated fact
What Bobby did was accuse the ref’s at Old Trafford of being biased & in effect cheating – if he comes out with it as bluntly as he did he will get charged just like Fergie did when he accused a ref of being unfit.And ref’s getting decisions wrong at Old Trafford against Latics is not proof of bias or cheating. It’s proof that they got decisions wrong – If Bobby had said “The ref got too many decisions wrong there today & that’s happened in the past as well” he’s still inferring that they’re biased but he’s not giving the FA the rope to hang him with because they have got decisions wrong
Well that was indeed a surprise!Yes there is an argument that if a player is good enough to play for a ‘better’ team then he would have been spotted by now, however, it’s rarely so black and white.
Gomez got into the Championship Team of The Season prior to signing for us and was tipped to be a star. Since then, he hardly featured and no half decent club is going to take notice or have a punt on a Wigan Athletic bit-part player.
In my opinion, he’d do well in a Spanish or Italian side, or an English team that play a similar system but with a better squad than what we have.
To be fair, there’s a world of difference between being a good player in the championship & being a good player in the premier league as we’ve seen ourselves. Latics had players who were great at that level De Vos, Breckin, Eaden (I know not everyone will agree with me on that last one but I always rated him) but who you could tell would struggle in the top flight – Jewell thought that & jettisoned them.
I never saw Gomez play at that level but I did read some reviews of him that made me wary of whether he’d be a success for us.
Good players can adapt & Gomez has some flaws in his game that means he can’t
You quite rightly point out that since starting he’s hardly featured & that’s coz he’s not good enough to command a regular starting place at this level & other managers know that. If he went to say United in this league he’d still get closed down just as quick & have to deal with the pace of the game just like he does at Latics
You say he’d do well in the Spanish league. Last time I looked Espanyol were in the Spanish league & they didn’t want him ;)He does take the odd touch or two too many, but I personally think he could be a decent player but in a better team where the players around him offer more options and create more space for him.
Surprise, surprise, I disagree with that bit!!
If he was capable of playing for a “better” side then he would be doing. He’s not a spring chicken & he’s not exactly unknown if managers of better sides thought he was capable of doing what you say then they’d have signed him in my opinion
I do think he’s a useful squad player for Latics to have & I do think he gets unwarranted stick off some but that’s about it[/quote]No offence Tylders but I would recommend your opinion on Gomez is taken with a pinch of salt as you would have considered him a winger until late last season ;)[/quote]
Bobby did used to play him primarily on the right hand side role yes & he was awful. Is much better in a more central role as the right/or left sided attacking midfielder or “in the hole”
So there!! :PHe does take the odd touch or two too many, but I personally think he could be a decent player but in a better team where the players around him offer more options and create more space for him.Surprise, surprise, I disagree with that bit!!
If he was capable of playing for a “better” side then he would be doing. He’s not a spring chicken & he’s not exactly unknown if managers of better sides thought he was capable of doing what you say then they’d have signed him in my opinion
I do think he’s a useful squad player for Latics to have & I do think he gets unwarranted stick off some but that’s about itFor what it’s worth, my own personal opinion of Gomez is that if everybody else played at his speed then he’d be a world beater. As it is, he is too slow in thought & body to succeed in this league.
I also don’t think in a million years that he’s capable of playing the central midfield role where this slowness would get exploited even more than it does when he plays in the attacking midfielder/deep lying forward role.
I think he’s a good player to have in a squad & can fill in well for the odd game but when he becomes a regular starter it takes something away from Latics performances coz I think the system works best when there’s 2 nippy blokes a la Maloney & Moses to stretch defences. As it is when Gomez gets the ball it seems to slow play down.
That said, I don’t think he deserves the stick he gets from some quarters – I put it down to the McCulloch/Neil Roberts effect. The majority of the Latics faithful will warm to a limited skill, 100%er & grafter type player than they will to the likes of Gomez & Gary Teale who (no matter what they do/did) were perceived as “bottlers” & “afraid to get stuck in”For future reference, the laws of association football state that the keepers kit must be distinguishable from all other players on the field of play both on their own team & the opposition (including the other keeper) :P :P
It’s about football showing respect because that could have happened to any set of supporters at any given game.
But how often and for how long do we have to pay these respects? We’ve been doing it – rightly, before anyone suggests I disagree with it – for 23 years, surely we don’t have to keep doing it, especially just because a report has been produced that says it wasn’t their fault. It doesn’t make it any less tragic or them any less dead, I’m afraid.
This is fast becoming the most politically correct hot potato in society where everyone is terrified of saying the wrong thing for fear of a scouse retribution.[/quote]
Exactly. I think it’s safe to say that their campaign for the truth & their campaign for some form of justice has the backing of every right minded football supporter out there but it’s almost as if some people are now trying to over-compensate for the lies, mudslinging, cover ups & what not that have gone on. The report is personal to Liverpool FC & it’s supporters – let them deal with it how they want & if they want backing in any campaign then I’m sure most of us will give it.
To be fair to the Scousers themselves. I work in Liverpool & I referee with a lot of Liverpool supporters – they’re not expecting that any other club or supporters should do anything. None of the ones I’ve ever broached the subject with have ever had any issue with talking about Hillsborough even if, as I have, you mention that some supporters turning up late, without tickets and/or after a few bevvies made the police job of crowd control that day harder than if everybody had arrived in plenty of time, with tickets & sober. They’re not naive enough to think that didn’t happen at all coz it happened at every major football event at the time (& still does) but the police would have known that & should have put adequate measures in place to deal with it
It seems, as Griff indicates, that people are too afraid of saying the wrong thing that they’re falling over themselves to show how much they care
I dont see it as mourning, its showing support to the familys and showing that all supporters can can come together because over the years all fans have had a really bad pressWhether you call it mourning or showing respect the point to me is that it kind of loses it’s effect to me when it seems forced or the link to football or any club.
The one’s Latics have held for the soldiers who have lost their lives in recent years I understand & it’s a fantastic gesture on behalf of the club & its supporters but Brian Moore or the Queen Mum??
As i said, maybe its me coz I’m the same with “forced” fun too like fancy dress parties, party games & (having seen a repeat of Holiday Reps last night) the 18-30 pub crawl event type thingsBack to the original topic, my own personal view is that I don’t like being forced to mourn.
Liverpool are doing their own thing this weekend as it directly effected them & as the opponents, United are joining in on that.
Some times I can understand the FA stepping in & saying that as a mark of respect to their contribution to football that all pro clubs should observe silences for the likes of Matt Busby, Brian Clough & that but sometimes I do resent some of them. Like:
The Queen Mum – I may be anti-royal anyway but why? I can’t recall her being a massive football fan or making any contribution to the beautiful game
Princess Di – see above.
The 2 girls murdered in Soham – As deeply tragic & horrific as that was, people are murdered every day & the football authorities don’t order us to mourn them. These 2 girls were wearing a football kit in the photo released to the press so the FA order a minutes silence. United I can understand as they were United fans but I found it strange then that the rest of the clubs were told to & I still find it strange now
Brian Moore – a commentator & famous football fan (Gillingham was it?) but quite why everyone in football had to observe a minutes silence puzzled me
There are others I found strange too
Maybe I’m heartless but if the Latics fans there on Saturday what to do something spontaneously or Latics themselves decide they want to put something in the programme or on the scoreboard, fine, but I don’t think anyone should try & force anyone else into doing anything what is in effect the publication of a reportTo be fair, I was only able to tell that Fletcher was on his way down on the slow motion replay & even then, he was still then caught by Alcaraz & would have been if he’d stayed on his feet. Fletcher’s offence may have come first but as an official you’d have to have some sort of super human vision to pick that up at real time & with everything else going on around you. Also technically you could still class Alcaraz’s challenge as reckless & the challenge came in before Fletcher started to go down – there doesn’t have to be contact, the ref could argue that the making of the challenge in that situation was reckless etc.. & therefore worthy of a 2nd yellow so he got it right
If a player is off the pitch receiving treatment then he has permission from the ref to do so & is no longer considered to be on the field of play & therefore couldn’t be playing anyone onside/offside. Its completely different than someone who deliberately steps off the field of play to try & catch someone offside (technically a caution) or someone whose momentum carries them off the field of play. It doesn’t happen often you’re right but when you talk about consistancy I genuinely can’t recall an official giving someone as offside when a defender was off the pitch
I should point out that I do think some of your other criticisms of decisions were spot on – can’t remember em all but the Valencia sending off at Liverpool was ridiculous. The 2nd was a yellow (not a red as Benitez said it shoudl have been) but the first was an absolute farce. I remember a Liverpool fan I spoke to after that game saying the caution was for the earlier encroachment but you can’t give out a rollicking for trying to close down to early, let the free kick be taken, the defender to close it down after the ball has been touched & then caution them for the thing you just had a word with them about earlier. The ref cautioned Valencia coz Gerrard whinged & the ref assumed he must have moved before it was taken.
I also remember that ref when Latics were 2-1 up & the 2-2 making a point of telling going up to every Latics player being substituted & making a point of telling them to hurry up. When Latics were 3-2 down & Liverpool a Liverpool player was ambling off he was stood 30 yards away saying & doing nowt
Can’t remember who it was but I wasn’t particularly happy with him that daythen came the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, and even the most naive of people probably thought ‘United fans will definitely use that for retribution over Munich songs’, and so it proved.Just a few things to say about United & some of their fans attitude to Hillsborough chants etc..
1) I was at Old Trafford for a league match against Derby County on the day of the Hillsborough disaster in the Stretford End paddock (where the players tunnel is now). In the days before the internet & mobile phones dribs & drabs were coming through via people with radios. Initially it was reported as crowd trouble & there were moans that Liverpool fans were gonna keep English clubs out of europe again (the rumour was UEFA were going to lift the ban that summer) but as the first half went on you heard it was more serious & people were paying little attention to the game as reports were coming through of fatalties. At half-time an announcement came out over the tannoy that there had been an incident at Hillsborough & that reports were coming through of deaths – at that point a load of cheering went up, not from United fans as you might expect but from the Derby contingent (& it was a big chunk of em) who (I assume) thought it was Notts Forest fans effected. If I remember rightly the United fans shouted em down & even the tannoy fella had a go.
2) 2 weeks after the disaster I was stood in the same section when they played Coventry. A group of Liverpool fans were doing a sponsored walk to raise money for the families of the victims & appeared at half-time (or just before kick off – can’t remember which) to walk round the pitch & do a collection. They were cheered & applauded all the way round & were absolutely swamped by people wanting to put money in – & not just coppers & 10p’s but big denomination notes too. I also saw plenty of grown men crying & people hugging the collectors. The Liverpool fans doing the collection looked genuinely blown away by the reaction
3) I started to watch Latics full time the season after that but as my old man was a steward I used to get a free ticket to some of the “big games” for some years after & didn’t miss a game against the Mousers years bar when I was at Uni. I genuinely don’t recall hearing any Hillsborough chanting until the time I stopped going to United altogether in 1998 – tell a lie there was 1 incident in a game at Anfield where a group of lads (no more than say 5 or 6 of em) tried to start a chant & got shouted down by the rest of the United fans almost as soon as they startedMy point (after that lonng winded ramble!!) is that I think the main issue is the lapse of time. Any Hillsborough chanting from United fans didn’t start for a good decade or so (at least) until after the disaster & seems to have gradually crept up since then as attitudes harden, memories fade, new fans who weren’t around when it happened come along & it doesn’t help that its between 2 clubs who arguably have the biggest rivalry in English football
In addition, the people that do such things are always in a small minority. There were a handful of Latics fans (dotted around 2 stands) that tried to disrupt the Stanley Matthews Minutes Silence but speak to a Stoke fan who was there & they won’t say “one or 2 planks shouted out” but “Wigan fans disrupted the silence”. Likewise any other incident at other similar things but people react which then makes the matter worse – let the idiots shout out, when they don’t get a reaction they’ll soon stopI had a league match ticket book at United for most of the 80’s & I was at United v Liverpool games (home & away) where it seemed that almost every Liverpool fan (& not just a small percentage of em) in the ground was taking great delight in singing “Who’s that lying on the runway etc…” so part of me can see (not agree) where some United fans are coming from
BUT for me this shouldn’t be about an eye for an eye but about respecting the memory of 96 innocent people who died at Hillsborough & the 20+ who died in Munich.
It’s also a chance for United fans to show that they may well have had this rammed down their throat for 31 years by some Liverpool fans but that they’re better than them
I can but hopeNot a badly written article, but the rant against ref’s falls completely flat on 2 points:
1) The 2 “debatable” red cards against United when Latics went down to 9 men were nailed on – Rodallega flung himself into a challenge 2 footed & deserved to go. Alcaraz got 2 yellows, now I can’t remember the first one if I’m honest but he deserevd the 2nd & it was a stupid, reckless & needless challenge (that said it always looked to me like Fletcher was already on his way down as soon as he saw the challenge coming in & before Alcaraz clattered him)
2) The Heskey goal against Chelsea – it doesn’t matter if a player is off the field of play when deciding offside. A forward would still be judged offside if he was stood off the pitch by the goal waiting for a punt forward & a defender is judged to be playing someone onside if they step off the pitch otherwise the defence would just back off the pitch every time the opposition went forward. I’m sure I can remember a big world cup/euros tournament where this happened & there was uproar but the reffing team got it spot onSometimes they get it wrong but mostly they get it right – the people who mostly get it wrong are those who don’t know the laws of the game!! ;)
Me? Touchy? Never!!
