Arsenal and Everton ‘should be embarrassed’ by Royal Rumble nonsense | OneFootball

The spectacle of Everton v Man Utd was rotten on Monday night but Arsenal are to blame; they’re top of the league with these tactics.

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Let’s get ready to Royal Rumble

Watching Utd-Everton and the awful mess that was on display on corners got me thinking.

Every Premier League team has now adopted some form of this behaviour (although I believe Arsenal is to blame for the initial inspiration). Every time you look at it happen you wonder how on earth it is allowed to stand by the refs?

Then you take a step back and think about it. A lot of what takes place is not strictly against the rules per se. Players can stand where they want, as long as they are not offside. There is no rule that they have to vacate the space for the goalkeeper or anyone else for that matter. They are allowed to stand their ground or ‘shield’ their position if an opponent is trying to push into their space.

Goalkeepers themselves, while getting a bit more protection in general, are just other players that can use their hands. So what’s the issue right? Might as well get every edge even if it is on the very borders of the rules?

The issue is that when you have 12-14 players doing this in the 6-yard box it just jars with what the game is supposed to be. It doesn’t feel right. When other teams score against yours like this it feels unjust (of course when your team does it, a goal is a goal!). This kind of thing doesn’t fit with what you want to see from ‘the beautiful game’.

It’s like watching a game of badly coordinated rugby line-outs, only with a bunch of jostling pansies instead. The rules of the game definitely need to be updated to address this. Interested in people’s thoughts of what could work…

Akillies. Malawi

…As a few people in the mailbox have said recently, the corner thing is really getting ridiculous. David Moyes and Everton should be embarrassed by it. As should Arsenal: trying to win games by creating a scrum in the box to play percentages where referees are too scared (for some inexplicable reason) to enforce the laws of the game is not football.

In fact, I can totally understand why the West Ham fans were so keen to see Moyes go given the dross his teams serve up constantly. Imagine sitting in their gleaming new stadium watching that shite every week?

There have been times in the past where, as your PFMs would tell you, goalkeepers have had “too much protection”. But that really isn’t the case now. Teams are making it their entire gameplan to play for corners, then crowd the goalkeeper, trap him and even force him behind the goal-line so he can barely even move for a cross let alone actually come out to claim it. This creates an entirely unbalanced playing field, giving all the advantage to the attacking team.

What’s a goalkeeper supposed to do? No referee seems to blow when he’s actually being fouled unless he goes down. He can’t go down, though, if he is fouled because his goal would be wide open. It will be entirely karmic the day that a keeper comes out to punch a cross, misses because he’s being obstructed, and knocks some gormless twat out cold.

But there’s a simple solution: just apply the existing laws of the game! Why are referees so scared to do this? As soon as a player stands on the keeper without attempting to play the ball and preventing him from moving, it is literally the definition of obstruction. Just blow and give an indirect free kick to the defending team as soon as the corner is played. Or, if that doesn’t work, we need a rule change. The obvious way to do it is simply to follow the logic of encroachment at penalties, and make it so that attacking players are not permitted in the six-yard box until the ball is played from the corner. That would level things up by giving everyone the same standing start, and it would mean that, as soon as someone did encroach, the ball is immediately turned over for a goal kick. It might also force teams to come up with more imaginative corner routines too for the benefit of the fans.

I’m personally sick of referees not enforcing the basic laws of the game in general. It’s like they’re dealing with toddlers by feeding them never-ending sweets and Cbeebies, indulging them constantly. Another example is the ten second or more delay when taking throw-ins and players moving miles up the pitch from where the ball went out.

In the Everton-United game, every single throw taker took a huge amount of extra territory, walking, pausing to throw, not actually throwing, and then walking a little bit more before then (half the time) actually doing a foul throw. Why don’t the refs blow and penalise them? Why not send them back every single time? Why don’t they turn the ball over to the other team? The laws of the game literally make provision for this when they’re either wasting time, moving up the pitch or doing a foul throw. Just police it properly. We need some zero tolerance: it would only take a couple of weeks of referees actually enforcing the laws, turning the ball over and carding players who complained to eliminate all of this sort of bullshit from the game. Matt, Sheffield

…The latest scourge of the beautiful game, as evidenced by the number of mails and comments, is the WWE corners. Monday night’s Everton/United game was a complete farce. So what can the officials do to try and stamp it out. It used to be defenders holding, blocking, obstructing but forwards are now equally to blame, especially the Arsenal style tactic, they’re not the only ones, of at least 3 attackers having no intention of challenging for the ball.

My original solution was to award a penalty every time, there’ll be at least one foul committed somewhere, 20 or 30 penalties in one weekend would soon make players rethink. But all this would lead to is even more forwards crowding the box to ensure this decision was given. Certainly a penalty should be given if a defender is not facing the ball, perhaps bring the assistants in to where they stand for penalties to watch for this, they would not be able to award offsides but VAR would sort that if a goal was scored.

How about limiting the number of players allowed in the six yard box at the moment the corner is taken? No good, it would just move the problem further away from the goal line and we really don’t want to start changing laws.

So what? How about referees, instead of calling players to them and saying “stop doing that, I’m watching”, and then allowing it to go on anyway, they immediately booked any players for ungentlemanly conduct if seen wrapping their arms around an opponent, pushing backwards or forwards whilst “standing their ground”, the pathetic sight of players putting their arms out in an “I’m not doing anything” manner is equally frustrating. 3 corners in and teams would be down to 9 men as players tend to be a bit stupid and think they will get away with it, because atm, they do!

It just calls for the PGMOL and on field officials to actually do their job, have some bollocks. Anyone else have a solution? Howard (coming soon, the diving solution) Jones

…I appreciate the thoughtful responses to the email on Gabriel’s dive, and seeing the corner-routine magic has me in a fairly philosophical sense: what do people actually want from the rules of football?

On the one hand, there is the ‘letter of the law’ crowd: “Well a hand hath been placed however gently upon the lower area of the back, therefore a foul shall be granted.” To that I would simply point out that it’s nigh-impossible to find an image of said defender doing his job without a fistful of his opponent’s kit. So clearly the referee isn’t using the same standard of application across a match, or else the sport would look completely different.

Then we have the greatest-league-in-the-world’s latest invention: corner chaos. I expect some enterprising sponsor to come in and get their logo in place for the madness. On every single one of Everton’s corners last night there were multiple fouls. Numerous players had no interest in doing anything other than blocking the goalkeeper – which in any of other phase of play is not permitted. And yet.

The telling moment for me came when Martinez had a goal ruled out earlier in the season on a corner. The VAR replay pops up and the commentators were left saying: honestly I’m not even sure which players are being looked at here, because there were fouls between about 4 pairs. You could rule-out the goal or give a penalty, it’s a coin flip.

So which is it Premier League? Should a strong defender be entitled to dive because it’s the only way a slight nudge can be perceived? Should a strong defender be allowed to simply stick their sizeable posterior into a goalkeeper, with nary a fancy for playing football? Which is it?

And for us as fans: do we like the blatant inconsistency? Should we have different rules for different situations? Do we enjoy when a light toenail’s brush justifies a foul sometimes, but hurling a player to the ground with both hands doesn’t in another? What do we actually want? Ryan, Bermuda

Stop giving me free content that I do not like

I saw your article earlier headlined ‘Anthony Gordon showing ‘incredible’ trait Arne Slot wants for Liverpool’ and thought I’m going to learn something here, and that Gordon must be doing something unusual or remarkable which would be attractive to Arne Slot and Liverpool (if Slot makes it to the next transfer window, which is uncertain of course).

So what did I learn. That Gordon is fourth in the Premier league based on ‘average of each player’s top five observed maximum one-second speeds’, with the data being provided and charted by your new friends at Gradient Sports.

So Gordon is a quick player. This is not new information, and unless this average highest sprint stat is used behind the scenes when assessing players I have never heard of it. It seems a spurious reason to crowbar another Gradient article in.

Unless your Gradient articles are going to tell us something we can’t observe with our own f***ing eyes, stop wasting your/our time! A, LFC, Montreal

Another example of the anti-Arsenal narrative

So Benjamin Sesko – who I think has great potential – wacks one into the net from 9 yards against Everton and he’s an undroppable beast. The answer to Man Utd’s woes.

Meanwhile, when Gyokeres scores 2 more in the NLD it was, some would say against the worst Spurs team ever and the jury is still out on him. He’s not up to it.

Double standards? Ken Charlatan, Ard Mhacha

Thoughts on that Man Utd win

A little bit on the win against Everton. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t 4-0. It wasn’t the greatest game but in terms of drawing a comparison to Amorim, which maybe a bit facile at this point, it was night and day

Of course there were negatives. Casemiro, Amad and Bruno looked pretty pants. Mainoo lost possession like he didn’t really want to play and we gave away 10 corners before we had one of our own. But we took on a low block and won (albeit with a counter attacking goal but you tell me that Cunha pass wasn’t KDB level football porn and I’ll show you a liar).

Lammens was commanding again even with Everton trying to shove everyone and their dog in front of him. He commanded, he punched, he held the ball. Also our transitional play was great. I remember the heady days of Amorim ball where we’d pass the ball backwards and forwards in the back five, try a long ball and lose possession. Whereas last night there were clever triangles moving the ball from the back to a much more strategic position in the opponents half. It was clean and efficient and didn’t always work but there was direction and a velocity to our game

So for some long term questions. should Carrick get the permanent job? Obviously it’s too early; let the man just focus on getting us through the season. He’s 8 games undefeated, it almost embarrassing for Amorim that he’s doing this with his team, let him cook

We absolutely need midfielders. Last season United fans were calling out for midfielders and a goalkeeper. We got a goalkeeper and two number 10s. And arguably Lammens has made an incredible difference but now Case is going and we’re looking at more games per week so if United/Ineos fall into the same trap of buying exciting players without the midfield foundation we will end up in the merde next season regardless of who the manager is (it does make life easier when a manager plays people to their strengths but I’m certain that Amorim’s golden handshake millions may have tempered any introspection about his formation and management).

Overall it’s actually enjoyable to watch United again with players playing actual football (forgiveness for those who dip a bit; they’re humans not machines) and not having to watch a manager with his head in his hands on the sidelined baffled why a formation he shoehorned in from a different team isn’t working and why players who are playing out of position not performing

Long may it continue and I’ll take a 1-0 over a low block anyday considering the difficulty most managers in the league at having with it. Less Disgruntled RSA

Bored, bored, bored: A rant

What a boring (topical) email to write but needs to be done. The game needs saving now! SOS

I’ve been ranting to anyone about how sh*t football is for some time – F365 (some posted, some not), IRL people (they do exist just step out the basement) and what was initially argued against is no longer argued against – football is f***ing boring relative to it’s past.

I’ve even convinced my Gen Alpha relatives by simply showing them old games and players and the look of disbelief when they see players shoot from distance and take players on is telling. My nephew refused to believe that Juninho Pernambucano wasn’t AI generated. By now everyone should have seen the viral December 2006 goal of the month comp but you wouldn’t get those goals in a f***ing decade at this rate, if ever.

The more professional things become, the more money to be made, the higher the stakes and cost of failure… then the more risk averse people become.

The even playing field, everyone being fit and professional, etc. is great but it does lead to small margins being the only way to win and not losing is more important than winning. Enter gamesmanship, dark arts, dogshit, etc. All fine and pantomime-ish when the small team does it, absolute shite when everyone does it. Fundamentally it comes down to risk mitigation instead of risk taking and that is pure shite for an entertainment product.

It isn’t the first time and won’t be the last but watching Everton vs. United was horrible. Teams that played fundamentally risk averse with so little quality and a home team that had one tactic, crowd the keeper and pray for some kind of error or bobble or deflection (sadly confirmed by the manager afterwards).

That’s pure stinking dogshit, it’s horrible to watch for everyone EVEN if you only watch highlights because there are now only lights, few of which are high!

Well what the f*** has happened? The tactics of the bottom of the league, you know industrial set-piece, dark-art focused tactics and approach are now the ONLY tactics that the alleged best team in the country use. Whether you are fighting for the title or to avoid relegation, the tactics are the same. kick it down the field for position, try and get a throw in or a corner and then push the rules as far as humanly possible in the hope that someone can scuff it over the line or VAR spots a handball or a shirt tug. Oh yeh, and f***ing cheat as much as possible (I thought cameras everywhere were meant to change that?!)

If you don’t post this, I don’t blame you. It’s long and about a boring topic – modern football and it’s fetid ecosystem, although personally cutting out the adjacent disappointments like football journalism, etc. is easier than the core product you were originally interested in.

Football stinks top to bottom – the core product, the coverage, the experience, the cost, the fucking gambling ads, the owners, the corruption, the regulatory bodies…. everything sucks ass.

None of that is new or unique but the core product in my lifetime at least kept you entertained.

It’s the same death spiral for me as Star Wars and other childhood classic IPs. Back in the day I loved SW and couldn’t wait for the new Battlefront when announced. Now, the game turned out to be a massive turd shaped let down but I could still fall back on the core product (the movies, lore, universe, etc.) being good…… Then the SW core product stopped being any good and you get left with only the old memories and movies, and in it’s current guise, SW is just dead to me.

Now to a degree, not as terminal for other media like movies, games, etc. because you can always go back and re-watch a classic or play an old game……. does not f***ing work long term for live sports though!

The core product and experience of Football is basically on life support, if I didn’t love United, professional football would offer absolutely nothing to attract, entertain and retain me.

Something seriously needs to be done though, when they can no longer find enough entertainment to make a 2 minute highlight video of a 90 minute match on youtube, well f***.

Diving used to be funny and entertaining in itself, now it’s entirely standardised, embedded, accepted and a go-to for teams from top to bottom. Just look at any ‘attack’ (read: corner/throw-in) that Arsenal do. At least a few players have been briefed to fall to the floor from the classic sniper in the stands and all other teams have followed suit.

Trends come and go and this surely won’t last too much longer. Maybe once Arsenal finally shit the bed spud-style and Arteta gets back into his plastic packaging to rejoin the other lego toys, we can all move on and pray what comes next is entertaining. But it really doesn’t change just how god damn shit and boring it all is now, and it hurts more because I was lucky enough to witness what came prior. My god Ronaldo and Ronaldinho at the same time, plus 50+ other players that would easily be the most entertaining players in the world right now.

Once tiki-taka became the norm, you then had teams that didn’t have the players to do it, try it ad nauseum and it was sooooooooooo f***ing boring. But my god what I wouldn’t give to watch Joe Allen pass it 140 times side to side on the half way line now instead of this and that says something.

Football sucks, I don’t care if United won, this just isn’t fun at all anymore and we are lying to ourselves if we say it is. It was actually better, things don’t continually improve and it needs to change – How about no players in the 6 yard box on a corner or deep throw in until it’s taken for an idea? (like keepers encroaching on penalties). People would have to actually run and attack space instead of just group hugging and then all falling over screaming in unison

Will it work? Who f***ing knows but it can’t be worse than it is right now. Football was an escape, a form of entertainment, a spectacle of skill and talent….. Now it feels like work.

Finally, a famous football line that the media trainers love so much, has now become the only guiding principle – ‘The most important is the 3 points’…… entertainment be damned. Moses (What a ramble……didn’t even have to mention the lack of mavericks, VAR intervening for 9 minutes after one of the gloriously entertaining corner goals, FIFA, nation states, Glazers, protecting rapists, insanely narcissistic players, gambling – can’t wait till a throw-in is brought to us by PaddyPower, it’s close).