No one has mentioned. Pen? or not to pen? That is the question.
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Bugger the "contact" bit, it's supposed to be a contact sport and it was till we started importing them Ities and Dagoes and being the innocents in this sort of thing we took it for granted that their diving and histrionics were the real thing, now it's too late to go our own way and back to the blood and thunder of yesteryear.
Comments from Alan Shearer about a player being "entitled" to go down if he feels a touch in the penalty area (ooh, missus!) do nothing to stop the rot and Don Revie too would have a lot to answer for if he were still with us.
There has been a new edict from the FA that contact is not a foul. If the ref saw it wasn't going to come to anything and the player was milking it, makes his job easier now to say no
For me it’s a definite pen. It’s not a coming together of two players, it’s a shove from behind.
And quite possibly it will. But if we score the majority of our goals working from the back, keeping possession, the risk/reward is worth it. It won’t be viewed that way though.
If we kick it long every time and gift possession back to the opposition, I’ll promise you we’ll concede more goals. Chesterfield was testament to that. We started well but when the crowd turned we started pumping it long. The ball came back every single time and we were under constant pressure.
Most of the time we play it out we get to the halfway line in possession. If we swapped that for kicking long all the time it wouldn’t be the case.
I can see the sense in the Slocombe and Baldwin combo, if a couple of players are going to press the goal kicks then why not enable Slocombe to gain 20 yards on his kicks and leave their players out of position trying to get to get the ball, that said there will be an uproar when or if it goes wrong 😂