[Seabs]

Newcastle players swarmed the ref and the linesman and Pardew was all over the 4th official when he initially ruled the goal out. MOTD didn't show that though did they. Little difference between that and what Fergie did. Didn't see the Valencia tackle at the time and MOTD didn't replay it for whatever reason. Positive news about Anita though because he was down for a long time before they took him off.

Still don't see how Cisse wasn't "active" for that goal. If he's not there then Evans doesn't lunge at the ball under pressure and De Gea doesn't have to worry about Cisse either. The rule is stupidly open for interpretation anyway. WAS GOL's at Reading and City plus yesterday's mistakes but of course Utd always get the right end of decisions.

Utd fans in here really do give the rest of us on here a bad name. Fuck me. 7 points after Boxing Day is nothing. Nothing. Especially for a team who look beatable by anyone. Only saving grace has been that City have been even worse this season.

Evra's useless as a defender. 4 goals doesn't excuse that. Gets caught out of position and letting players just fly by him way too much. He's inexcusably lazy. Ridiculous yesterday when he went galloping forward and WALKED back as they broke leaving Giggs to cover at LB. Baffling how people can say Rafael/Rio/Evans are as much to blame for defensive errors. Rafael's been brilliant this season since the Fulham match. Evans has been rock solid for the majority of the last 2 years. I thought he was awful for a long time but he's been great for the past couple of seasons now. Rio's best days are behind him but the Liverpool match showed that he can still be one of the best defenders in the league on his day. Just doesn't happen enough. Vidic/Evans will be the partnership when Vidic is match fit again anyway and I'm really confident in that duo. Smalling looks so awkward going forward from RB. Buttner is terrible defensively. Even worse than Evra. Definitely not an option to play in the League. Sucks that Fabio is getting much game time at QPR. The midfield doesn't take enough slack for our defensive problems. Way too many times they let the opposition just run right through them and leave our defence exposed. Carrick looks brilliant just passing the ball around but he doesn't give the back four the cover they need. Same for our wingers covering the wing backs. De Gea's been great all calendar year. Sure he's made the odd mistake but what keeper doesn't? He's improved ten fold since the first half of last season when he was having nightmares on a weekly basis. We're still outscoring teams though so it's not a major issue I guess until we stop scoring goals for fun too.

City really rely on Yaya too much. Last season him and Kompany spent a full season in beats mode and that's what won them the title. This season they've been really average and it's exposed the weakness of the squad and their dependability on key players. Hart's making too many errors to excuse now. Last season they were an intimidating force defensively. Not so much this season. They're still strong at the back but I think teams fancy their chances of scoring much more now than they did last season. Hart looked unbeatable and Kompany/Lescott were a rock solid partnership. Nastasic has done fine but I don't really get why you'd break a title winning CB duo up when a large part of their success was how defensively strong they were. Garcia isn't really a improvement on Barry either as much as Mancini seems to insist he is. Hoping they don't sign a creative midfield and/or a striker in January. Mancini's too harsh on his strikers in the press. He could do with a replacement for Dzeko/Mario but it's not Aguero and Tevez's faults they aren't banging goals in left, right and centre. Hard to do that with minimal service.

Oh and City ARE a big team right now. You don't win the Premier League and not be a major team with the ability to attract star players. Sure Liverpool have a much more iconic history but what does that matter for right now when they're a mid-table team who can't attract the big players they used to. You really think someone like Llorente would go Liverpool over City because of their history? Is he more likely to go Villa or Forest because they've got more "history" in Europe. School holidays always seem to attract more idiots on here for a short spell.

[Serbinator]

Originally Posted by Anark

Exactly. Everybody has their own history. Just some clubs' history are more glorious while others are harping back to FA Cups won in 1904.




Yeah, no action was taken on Fellaini, no action at all apart from the three match ban.

Sorry, I should've clarified it a bit better. He got the 3 match ban for the headbutt on Shawcross because the referee said he didn't see it. However, he said that he saw the 'punch' and 'elbow' and didn't call for a foul, meaning no action was taken for them. That's why many expected a 9 match ban (3 incidents of violent conduct) but he was only given 3, due to only one counting.

[T-C]

For what it's worth I don't think city are a big club yet either. They don't tick enough boxes.

Strong team now, but not a big club in the grand scheme of things. Nothing wrong with that mind.

[Kiz]

the thing is they are getting the service. we've had something like 30 more shots than united. the midfield aren't covering themselves in glory but the strikers aren't firing or taking the chances they were last season. it's a bit of a mess really.

[WOOLCOCK]

Originally Posted by Shepard

Figure WOOLCOCK will be interested by this. Ridiculous really if they want to try and enforce it when the majority of the south west corner sings "we'll stand if we want" during matches. Unless they plan on banning the most vocal area of the stadium.

Also today made me see the downfall of throwing away fans up in the gods. It's understandable since when we gave them the south stand and Wigan brought 50 fans it looked bad but when City sell out their allocation and you get an atmosphere like today I was wishing they would actually have been in a decent place for the fans to have a bit banter. Oh well.

Seen it elsewhere, utterly ridiculous decision. Been told the FSF are looking into it since it seems ridiculous to ban someone for doing something that can't be proven to be unsafe. Just them picking out a random individual to make an example out of and hope it spreads to the others, which it won't. If standing was truly unsafe you'd get games being halted whilst stewards tried to enforce regulations, but they only make an attempt when its a small pocket of fans who they think they can bully and intimidate. There's a reason 200 Bristol City fans will be hassled at Leeds but 500 Millwall or 5,000 Man Utd won't be, the stewards just will not get into that sort of environment because they know they stand no chance and would sooner incite trouble instead of preventing it.

I don't even know why a club like Sunderland bothers with this sort of thing. The South West corner has stood in numbers for years and represents a small pocket of the ground. All the talk about regulations and fines is just a scare tactic to get casual fans onside in pointing out those who stand. No club will be fined or have sections of the ground closed by a Local Council because it cannot be proven that removing the threat of 'persistant standing' is necessary for preserving health and safety. You'd think Sunderland would just leave these lot to it since nothing will ever come about from it rather than alienating a core part of their support which let's be honest they could do with keeping close to them given attendances would very likely drop if they slide down the table. Not a dig on Sunderland per se, just a sad reflection of the typical attitudes of a casual modern day supporter.

Seeing reactions from some United fans reminds me why I don't bother getting caught up in all the hysteria anymore. If we lose we move on to the next game and try to correct the wrongs. Amount of fussing over trivial things annoys me to no end. Its a game of football. Grab a beer or ten, have a laugh, enjoy the atmosphere and just make the most out of the day, win or lose. Your team will still be there next week. Wish more people had the FCUM attitude of just enjoying football and making the most out of a day regardless of the result. Too many things in life that can bring you down without worrying about who's stats represent good value for money and all that jazz. It was an entertaining, chaotic and typical Boxing Day game. United can't be considered champions elect given how inconsistent they are in periods throughout every game as well as the nature of the Premier League these days making it hard to predict any result.

City are a big club in the sense that their money and newfound success is making them the new thing to follow in football, the same way Chelsea found newfound fame around 2004-2006 when Mourinho was at the healm. They're a traditional old school club with the likes of Forest, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, Villa and others. They're by no means in the leagues of the elite of European Football in a traditional sense but with how short sighted football is these days to many they're up there with the Madrid's and Milan's of the game just because they're winning trophies and challenging for titles. Liverpool historically are a far bigger and iconic club but in today's world that counts for very little to your average fan who's only concerned with short term results and trophies.

Also seen the Forest manager got sacked yesterday after a 4-2 win at home to Leeds, 8th in the league and a couple of points off the play off spots. This all done supposedly with a thrown together team consisting of numerous loan deals and players leaving. The argument from the foreign owners being that they were concerned at the inconsistency in the results and want short term results. Bonkers decision and the epitome of modern football greed. Poor bloke takes a thrown together team and gets them within touching distance of the playoffs in arguably the most inconsistent and haphazard league and is sacked presumably because they're looking for a bigger name to takeover and raise the image of the club. Cunts.

May as well reward anyone who took the time to read this rambling drivel that you've heard 1000 times before, enjoy:

[ROUSEY]

The thing that rubs in that banned seat even more, is that it looks as if it is a seat at the back row of the stand based on the part of wall I can see.

Meaning it's not even a case of the person behind not being able to see as it's an arl 80 year old stuck there. Joke.

[Cookie Monster]

RAWK fact ->

Rodgers record is exactly the same as Hodgsons during his 31 game campaign in charge of us:

Hodgson - P31 W13 D9 L9 F41 A33 GD+8 - Net Transfer Spend - Recouped £2.2mill

Rodgers - P31 W13 D9 L9 F48 A40 GD+8 - Net Transfer Spend - Spent £16.4mill

[WOOLCOCK]

Originally Posted by Purple Aki

The thing that rubs in that banned seat even more, is that it looks as if it is a seat at the back row of the stand based on the part of wall I can see.

Meaning it's not even a case of the person behind not being able to see as it's an arl 80 year old stuck there. Joke.

Nicely spotted, I wasn't even paying close attention to the wall behind. As you said makes the decision even more nonsensical. I can appreciate not everyone wants to stand, and that obviously if people from the middle of a section onwards are standing than chances are you will be. That being said there are universal rules to curb this sort of dilemma: those who wish to sit should go nearer the front of the section/stand (depending on whether you're a home/away fan) and those wishing to stand should as a general rule head as far back as they can so as to hopefully nullify the stewards' persistance in getting them to sit. As you said there's a difference between being a group of 3 standing with 5 rows behind you sat, and then 3 rows at the back standing with every row in front of them sitting.

Whole problem with this is that ground regulations are only enforced when it suits clubs. There are so many reports of clubs basically accepting that the back 5 rows or more of a section can get away with standing since they're generally not imposing someone else's view, which is often a common claim when you see people report on ejecting those who persistantly stand. Its the same with standing in aisles, drinking within site of the pitch, being in a seat not allocated to you etc. So many clubs only decide to enforce these 'guidelines' when its convienient to them that it creates problems when other supports get hassled. If you're a Burnley support and you're getting hassled at Forest when you know Leeds and Derby fans had no mither simply because of the greater numbers travelling you're going to resist attempts to sit because you shouldn't feel like you have any less of a right to stand than they do.

It does irritate me when people go right near the back of a stand (especially as an away supporter) and then sit and moan when those around them are standing. Common sense says you go as close to the front as you can, so that if you wish to sit you can do so without expecting people in front/around you to conform to your whims.

[Gambit]

Yeah but we play much better football and Roy hodgeson came out with the dumb comment after dumb comment.

[Chain Gang Soldier]

Originally Posted by Mclovin it

Yeah but we play much better football and Roy hodgeson came out with the dumb comment after dumb comment.

Frankly at least Under Rodgers they look like they give a shit. Didn't even feel like they were even trying at times under Hodgson