• The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Match Tottenham v Chelsea - December 8th - 4:30pm KO

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

I disagree- a lot of these are, or should be, predictable scenarios which you anticipate and drill on as a good coach. Other teams seem to be better at being able to do this right now than us. I have to believe that's a coaching issue.
A fair shout, but I'm not privy to the training regime, so can't agree with any certainty. However, poor training or not, I stand by my point that sloppiness in possession, bizarre decision making, a poor 1v1 attempt at goal, and various other individual errors that a pro-footballer shouldn't be making, didn't help us out.
 
I think it was bollocks, he’s just error prone. He could have been wearing any shoes and made the same fuck ups.

Do the old blame my shoes routine and get away with it.
I can't stand Cucarella; he runs around like a headless chicken, and goes down at the slightest of touches. Loved seeing him hit the deck, and my wife saw on TV, that he was giving the kit man evils, as if he was responsible for his slippy slidiness.
 
Last edited:
1 zillion %, my man.

But we ain't allowed to criticise them. You can shit on managers, players, even fans. But refs are like a mafia, they've got each other's back and they'll come for you if you dare speak against them...or even just ask simple, valid questions. How many managers & players have been banned/fined for having a legitimate pop at refs, even when they weren't out of order? Zero friggin freedom of speech when it's about those muppets, doesn't matter they're incompetent, rude and we all know some of them have clear bias against certain teams. And obviously that some of them can be - and have been - bought. I'm surprised they don't impose gagging orders on the media so reffing is never discussed. As for that segment on Sky, what a joke...whenever I watch it, I could've written the stuff in advance. It's like VAR, just to give fans the impression something positive is being done about the issue.

I absolutely despise the mugs, starting with that thundercunt Webb.
Why? Cui bono?

These are the questions to which I keep coming back whenever anyone brings up a theory of systemic bias among referees and other officials. Why would they favour certain outcomes? How do they benefit? Who does benefit? And from where do these instructions come? How high up does it go?

I understand the PL wanting certain things to happen, like Leicester winning the title that year, for the narrative and to promote the league. But (a) do they really care about Chelsea winning the league? and (b) would they stoop to outright corruption in order to aid their preferred narrative?

If this was in Brazil, where the money to be made from cartel-level gambling far outstrips the money in the legit ecosystem and impetus for integrity, I'd find it a lot easier to believe. And I think even in England, refs should be paid better (if their performances are good). But it just seems kinda hard to believe that anyone would put the necessarily huge amount of effort and resources into fixing a massive, billion-eyes-on-it league like the PL. We've seen players punished with extreme severity for very small-scale infractions in this area, like Trippier not sufficiently discouraging his mate from betting on his Atletico transfer. (If anything, that shows how much power the bookies have in elite football, and I'm pretty sure they aren't going to tolerate match-fixing.)

IDK. When every team's fans believe the refs are against them, it becomes logically impossible for them all to be correct.
 
I am a season ticket holder my friend. I was in the South as usual singing my head off and cursing like a fish wife as the occasion demanded.

XG is a statistical metric used by every single footballing department in the world. Having a higher XG is always better than having a lower one. Yes that was one of the very tiny pieces of hope I could take out of the game - so I did.

Just because you're angry doesn't give you the right to be an utter cunt. You ain't special.
I used to be the xG sperg around here. Some of my old posts are still excellent introductions to the subject (if I may say so..). To be fair, I did work with academic models for a while.

TL;DR: xG is still a really bad way of measuring who deserved to win a football match or who performed better during a match or whatever. And I'm only talking statistically, leaving aside that the eye test will always be better. xG models are still noisy and primitive and don't measure what most people think they do (a lot are just an inverse square on 3-5 discrete radial areas with their centre in the middle of the goal, with maybe a few other variables thrown in). To illustrate the lack of nuance, I like using the example of the Bundesliga's official stats giving Kane's 60 yard screamer for Bayern a 0.2 while most tap-ins are in the realm of 0.6.

Due to the inherent degree of error/noise, xG is only really useful over a larger sample size than one match. It's great for comparing striker's clinicalness over a season or more. G vs xG is the gold standard for that. But over 90 minutes, it's a lot messier and I don't take it seriously. (Models are improving all the time but even the best are still like 12 features or something, from what I hear, and they'll come out with freak outputs on a regular basis.)
 
Jamie Carragher: 'Spurs play well but never win anything'
sad monty python and the holy grail GIF
 
Why? Cui bono?

These are the questions to which I keep coming back whenever anyone brings up a theory of systemic bias among referees and other officials. Why would they favour certain outcomes? How do they benefit? Who does benefit? And from where do these instructions come? How high up does it go?
PL needs its insane domestic & foreign TV rights dosh. Big clubs keep getting a big slice of that pie, selling zillion tickets & shirts + tours abroad, keep qualifying for the CL etc. Refs wanna keep reffing in the PL and get noticed for European + international comps...also nice to make a bit of extra (tax-free) cash on the side.
IDK. When every team's fans believe the refs are against them, it becomes logically impossible for them all to be correct.
Yes, of course. But football is an emotional thing and you always gonna blame the refs when your team is doing crap, cause it's just easy scapegoating...even when you have zero case. But some teams - through sheer bad luck or else - clearly got it worse than others. And I'm not talking about Spurs, I think we're actually alright...unless we face Chelsea or Woolwich or United. History speaks.
 
Considering I was expecting a tonking, I suppose I should be grateful that it wasn't the case.
Bits of our play were good but we're so soft, that any team thinks they can get a result against us, home or away.
I have to admit that I left once the fourth went in, and hadn't realised that Sonny had scored until yesterday. All that did was make the score look respectable.
 
Back
Top