Things In Football That Grind Your Gears

Media graphics listing a team in numeric order

Referees.
Referees who decide not to apply the rules of the game of football.
Examples: Allowing players walk 15 metres before they take a throw-in.
Allowing goalkeepers walk around the area for about half an hour before distributing the ball out of their hands.
Allowing players who have just been booked, away with another stupid challenge to which commentators say "If he hadn't had a yellow card by now, that would have been a booking"

The only thing non-referee related that I don't understand is why teams just don't go for the kill when they have the opposition on the back foot. I can see in Spain how the head-to-head might encourage you to do that, but no-one in other leagues has that specific rule. The Champions League spot this year could actually go down to goal difference.

Keepers dishing out abuse to his players whenever the opposition have a shot or whatever. The defenders may have actually done their job well and forced them to have a wild attempt at goal but that doesn't matter - keeper must give them a bollocking.

It happened a few times last night with Pickford. Pretty sure Stones and Maguire were fed up with his nonsense. And to top it off, Pickford made a hames of a clearance towards the end of the game and still thought he was well within his rights to have a go at some of his teammates.

sterz wrote: »

Keepers dishing out abuse to his players whenever the opposition have a shot or whatever. The defenders may have actually done their job well and forced them to have a wild attempt at goal but that doesn't matter - keeper must give them a bollocking.

It happened a few times last night with Pickford. Pretty sure Stones and Maguire were fed up with his nonsense. And to top it off, Pickford made a hames of a clearance towards the end of the game and still thought he was well within his rights to have a go at some of his teammates.

Yeah Ive noticed the Pickford going apesh1t at his defenders routine too, its common enough. My reaction is always :rolleyes: because he is well capable of a blunder himself.

One annoyance for me lately is players almost seeming to forget the rule that you cannot be offside from a throw. Have seen it a few times where there is a throw high up the pitch but the receiver is positioned as if the offside rule is in play whereas they should be running into the space in behind and towards the byline to get a cross in.

Supporters hoping that their players get knocked out of international tournaments/fail to get selected for international squads/etc so that they'll be rested for future club games. Especially in cases where players have played a big role in bringing successful to a club. I find it odd how selfish some fans are, that after all these players have done for your club that you'd still be selfish enough that if given the choice of having a player slighter fresher for the start of the club season or see them possibly win an international tournament (something that's very rare to win and which would cement their status as legends in their home countries) you'd prefer the option of having them fail on the international stage.

All clubs now changing 3, and in some cases 4(!!!!) jerseys, every single season.
Worse, is when the clubs justify the new jersey as having some huge link with the city, and bigging it up, when 10 months later they'll be consigned to the scrap heap. I'm thinking here of the Barcelona jersey with the 11 stripes that were to signify the 11 parts of the city. This was after they had just p***ed all their fans off by breaking the tradition of having stripes at all, when they went down the "looks a lot like Croatia" check.
Leicester City are ditching their beautiful (to me) FA cup winning maroon jersey for a bland light green effort, which looks terrible.
Leeds are upsetting their fans with yellow trim on the home kit, while having to introduce a new purple (doesn't look purple to me mind) jersey as their replacement for an actual purple jersey from last season.
I can see why everyone would go down the replica of replicas route because the shelf life is short on these things.

jacool wrote: »

Referees.
Referees who decide not to apply the rules of the game of football.
Examples: Allowing players walk 15 metres before they take a throw-in.
Allowing goalkeepers walk around the area for about half an hour before distributing the ball out of their hands.
Allowing players who have just been booked, away with another stupid challenge to which commentators say "If he hadn't had a yellow card by now, that would have been a booking"

The only thing non-referee related that I don't understand is why teams just don't go for the kill when they have the opposition on the back foot. I can see in Spain how the head-to-head might encourage you to do that, but no-one in other leagues has that specific rule. The Champions League spot this year could actually go down to goal difference.

Agree about refs. I regard them generally as a necessary evil but Euro has been good - proper tackles are being allowed and players who go down are being told get up.

Jermaine Jenas, I would take Micah Richards and his constant laughing at everything over Jenas every day of the week and twice on Sunday's

People saying the team they support struggled in home games more than other clubs last year because there was no fans in the stadium.

I'm upgrading this to Cesar Azpilcueta time-wasting (and included theatrics)

Stops a throw so that Alonso can get a drink on the other side of the pitch - and gets away with it.

Narrative

That everything in football has to have a narrative. Sky Sports had 3 ex-Irish internationals having to praise Ronaldo after last night. Clinton Morrison was embarrassing, Phil Babb was a little less so, but you could see that Richard Dunne wanted to talk about the excellent Irish performance, but he wasn't allowed. The interviewer just kept going on about Ronaldo. The Sky Sports reporter then kept saying "this was in the 5th minutes of injury time". It was the bloody 6th!!!

Even the ref played into the narrative, lowering himself to apologising as he booked him. He apologised for doing his job, which he failed to do throughout the game.

Oh yeah, and w***ers who put their club, that they inherited from their dad because they couldn't think for themselves, ahead of their country. I'm angry today :(

Neymar earns a £465,000-per-month 'ethical bonus' due to an unusual clause in his PSG contract.

He has cost PSG more than £419m since his world-record transfer from Barcelona in 2017. 

There is too much money in football - just wondering how long it would take me to earn that much (need a new agent!)

The whole footballing world going getting obsessed with Anti-Racism and Black Lives Matter yet we see nothing in the Premier League about the ongoing racism in Qatar. Qatar has an active slave trade and blatant human rights abuse yet players turn a blind eye to it. And where is Sky Sports to highlight this?

VAR had a good long look at the 2nd one and said it was okay