General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

so by this do you reckon the chief burden of goals was on Firmino for all the years prior then? Liverpool have played a system of the centre forward creating space and opportunity for the wide forwards coming inside for, like, 7 years now.

Nunez finishing is a problem. Of course it is. But again, he’s far from the main reason Liverpool won’t win the league - and he’s certainly one of the reasons the team has been in the running for so long.

wolves really should have taken the lead there

Should've been, but was never gonna happen.

1-0 arsenal on the stroke of HT

The same way that Benzema (or Higuain) was Real Madrid's main first choice forward while Cristiano Ronaldo was there yeah? They were 'playing the number 9' there for the majority of Ronaldo's career in Spain.

Is Havertz Arsenal's main forward now? Or is Jesus? Because it if is either of them, then they have bigger problems to face than Liverpool as Nunez is out-performing both. I say that Saka is Arsenal's primary forward and he is not the central forward Arsenal try to get attacks either to him or through him. Was Weghorst Man Utd's main forward last season, because he played central? Or Martial? Is Hojlund the main forward this season? Absolutely not, it's Rashford.

Nunez has 8 assists in the PL this season. 5 of them are to Salah, so there is a clear directive at times there that Liverpool play to Nunez centrally who can then play in Salah for the goal-scoring. It is not too dissimilar to when Firmino is around with using Nunez as the central player who then brings the wide players into the action closer to goal where they can attack the ball better. Firmino used to drop deep and link up there that way but Nunez is more Drogba-esque in terms of being a one man battering ram using his pace and power to take control of more direct balls, or into channels etc. BTW Drogba scored 10 & 12 goals in his first 2 PL seasons. Actually, Drogba's average over his (first) Chelsea stint of 8 seasons was 12 PL goals per season. Nunez is on 9 & 11 so far.

That October to February ish run of games was brilliant and a clear indication of how the attack functioned with Nunez and Salah being a great combo. That game where Liverpool created the most xG ever in a game against Newcastle (Salah scored 2, one assisted by Nunez) and then Chelsea game too. Salah was not available that game, so Nunez then became the primary focus of attacks. Nunez single handedly destroyed the Chelsea defence that night, even while being double marked. He didn't get the goal but he actually was involved in nearly every good attack that night. Think he hit the post a few times in those games, and the keepers made some incredible saves but that all gets forgotten over the course of the season because Liverpool, the team, hit a slump in April

@Fitz* Is Havertz Arsenal's main forward now? Or is Jesus? Because it if is either of them, then they have bigger problems to face than Liverpool as Nunez is out-performing both. I say that Saka is Arsenal's primary forward and he is not the central forward Arsenal try to get attacks either to him or through him.

Arsenal’s biggest problem is that they don’t have one tbh. Yes, they share the goals around and that’s fantastic but in the really tight games they sometimes struggle to find that bit of magic to get it over the line. I thought it would have been a priority this season but I’m looking forward to seeing who comes in to solve that problem for them

That's a very weird statement by Forest l, and it's not their first time either. Nearly every time they are on TV there is a reference to their referee analyst. Lodge your complaint in private if you want to, but going on about what club a VAR supporters and trying initiate a public pile on, from the official club account, is somewhat weird behaviour

Fair play to Forest for calling out how bad the refereeing and the usage of VAR has been this season. They will get fined heavily for that tweet but they are not wrong.

Regards,

P.

I don’t know to be honest but PGMOL haven’t helped the matter at all letting referees go over to the Middle East having Howard Webb go on TV with Michael Owen and badly defend errors. Maybe Forest along with other clubs have gotten fed up doing the sensible thing and not seeing results from that and Forest decided to just call it out now. There needs to be a full review of PGMOL and the usage of VAR over the summer. One simple thing is don’t have referees who are local to a team referee that teams match that would cut out a lot of the conspiracy theory crap online.

Regards,

P.

Atwell is incompetent, but not because he is a Luton fan!

How? You would assume most people who've gotten involved in any capacity in football have supported a football team before doing so. It would be a bit tricky to get referees in who haven't been watching football upto that point.

I agree with this.

On the other hand though, there are no consequences for any of these referees that are regularly prone to mistakes.

I applaud Forest for making these kind of statements, the lack of consistency is a joke and PGMOL et al are beyond criticism.

Refs doing nixers in the Middle East I can’t believe is still allowed, has it ever been reported how much they make off them?

Can't read it either.

On mobile its unreadable alright

On mobile it's a mess.

Tbf I find it hard to buy any referee conspiracy for any team.

They are generally all that fùckin incompetent that if they tried to help a team they would probably fúck up and end up hindering and costing them the game.

scream loudest, get heard. VAR has been a total disaster all season, and certainly sky have cooled their criticism of it.

if the decisions were that bad, fire away. sky seem to be focusing on the statement rather than what lead them to making the statement in the 1st place.

officially or non officially? either way, it should not be allowed.

i also think there is no way the ref should be in contact with VAR, it should be 1 way only - ref, you made a mistake there. i'm gonna award a pen.

this nonsense of no pen for me, no pen, there was no foul there (or whatever that fella said to VAR after the mcallister non pen). that should not be allowed. speak away but VAR wont hear your thoughts, so wont be influenced by the onfield ref is the best way forward.

the VAR ref's should also come from a separate pool from the onfield refs.

and clear and obvious needs to go asap. its branded as not wanting to re-referee the game, but its really just to protect crap referring decisions.

very gooda