England matches discussion.

Norway are fairly poor overall, especially if Sorloth plays as he is just so slow and he just ends up going backwards. It's just Haaland who drags them up a level. And with our defence being a shambled unless we are forced into a low block like after the sending off I do fear he will get chances.

Still don't understand Tuchels squad tbh. Its as obvious James would get injured, its not like he is Shaw who has just had a season where he started every game and seems to have found a solution to his injuries, And he just doesn't seem to trust Spence anywhere but LB hence why he went with a CB to start at RB and when he was sent off brought on Stones and moved Konsa there. Why when Livramento got injured did he an add inexperienced CB in his place? I worry he will play Konsa RB and play Stones who isn't match fit at CB and that Haaland could have a field day.

And I'm not sure LB is much better. O'Reilly gets injured and we are down to Spence who he doesn't see to trust.

I'm not a fan of TAA because he just doesn't have a position that suits him (You are always making massive compromises to fit him in any position) but in those situations surely you take him when Livramento gets injured. And Statistically Tyrick Mitchell is the closest we have to a backup of O’Reilly followed by Ryan Sessegnon and then behind those two Shaw if you want experience over youth.

Also Toney. Surely when he took Kane off Toney was ideally. Big strong, good at winning balls I the air and can hold play up. With Rodgers it was being lost and coming back just as much as it was with Kane

 

While it's wrong Trump used his influence, Balogun's is justified on a couple of fronts.

First being while everyone is talking about how intent doesn't matter it's talking about when a player makes a conscious action such as a tackle. If you do a tackle, get it wrong and put a player at risk then it's a red card but 'conscious action is important here'. If its not a conscious action and its out of your control that doesn't get punished, there are situations every game where the player isn't taking a conscious action but it could be dangerous to the opposition but they don't get a red. Balogun's is knocked off balance by the Bosnian, his leg goes up and gravity means it has to come down. The Bosnian is behind him so he can't even try and adjust as he doesn't know the players leg is there. It's a complete freak accident that no-one has any fault in.

In addition they aren't supposed to show the ref those decisions in slow motion as they do make it seem worse and certainly not such a short part of the clip, it looks more deliberate in slow motion without the context so that' a VAR failure

 

There is a difference between the Qatar player and Balogun though. Thats the Qutari player was making a challenge (although it should never have been upgraded to a 5 game ban, there were worse tackles in that match that only got a yellow and then there was Musiala tackle in the Panama game that was the most premeditated attempt to do someone harm that I have ever seen. That should have been an immediate red and like a 6 month ban from all football).

Law 12 specifically states

It says tackle or challenge to avoid situations where a player gets punished for situations that might be dangerous to a player but its outside anyones control.

Balogun hasn't made a tackle or challenge. He gets to the ball first, the Bosnian challenges him and knocks him off balance, his foot goes off the ground due to this and then due to the laws of physics it has to come down. If it was due to a challenge he was making then its a red, or maybe even if he intentionally made sure his foot came down on the leg then you could argue it was a red but the Bosnian is behind him, he can't see where the leg is.

And let's just think about this for a minute, seriously foul play DOES NOT NEED CONTACT. Something deemed serious foul play is so even if contact with the player doesn't happen. Without contact would this have been deemed serious foul play? No it wouldn’t. VAR only looked at it because of the injury and looked at it in slow motion and stills without the full context , it shows only after Baloguns leg starts to come down so it doesn't show why his leg was up which does change the context

 

I don't think anyone is arguing that it was a red. It was extremely harsh and never a red card. HOWEVER, irrespective of how harsh it was, according to FIFA's own rules, he should AT LEAST miss the next match. The fact he is able to play tonight is due to the fact he's the USA's best player and Infantino is so far up Trump's bum that you can't even see his shoes. If this would have happened to any other player on any other team the ban would NOT have been 'suspended'.

 

Except we don't actually know that for a serious screw up by both the referee and VAR that there isn't mechanism in place for oversight and over turning things because while we have had harsh reds they have been about interpretations not outright going against both the laws of the game AND the VAR guidelines (Although it really should work the other way as well. Messi should have received a ban and Musiala shouldn't be playing football again for the rest of 2026).

The rules only state that Nations can't appeal, it doesn't say FIFA can't decide to overturn on their own. And FIFA does have a Disciplinary Committee and the mechanism for suspending a punishment does exist so it's not like this is a sudden off the cuff decision, the mechanism and panel have always existed.

Also remember we also have to take anything Trump says with a grain of salt as he just likes the sound of his voice and trying to make himself out to be important and not the compete and utter windbag he is. For all we know he never did anything he claims and even if he did ring up it doesn't mean what he claims was what was told. He might have just been told its already under internal investigation and he had nothing to do with it.

It would obviously be better if the fact all reds are reviewed was out in the open and it would also be better as I said if it looked at situations where VAR maybe should have taken harder actions but its a million times better we don't have clearly wrong decisions made that impact 2 matches

 

Olise didn't have multiple points of error because VAR can't do anything about yellows. If VAR was used on Yellows (Which it probably should be, if we are going to have VAR this situation where it can be used on some things but not others makes little sense. Especially this new thing where it can overule a corner thats been given incorrectly BUT can't overrule a goalkick that should have been a corner makes no sense) and it didn't overturn this then it would make sense the panel should overturn a clear VAR failure but its not used on Yellows so now trying to overturn it makes no sense

The simple fact this is probably the most obvious world cup example where a system designed to get better decisions fails in multiple areas and makes punishment much worse and VAR having some oversight might actually make these officials do a better job rather than failing regularry despite having all the tools to do their job correctly

 

I don't think it needs to go beyond an oversight body as long as the oversight body is independent from the Ref's unlike the situation we see in the Premier League where the oversight body is the refs themselves and even when they admit fault they always find a way of shirking blame. There will be times where VAR will screw up simply because of the 'time crunch' but an independent oversight body that doesn't have as much of a time crunch and can potentially collect more information would atleast be able to reduce the impact of these (removing incorrect cards that could make them miss additional matches) or atleast hold refs and var to more accountability which can only make them better at their jobs. There is always atleast 48 hours between matches for a team in a World Cup or continental championship which is enough time to do a decent review of decisions

 

I don't see us having any chance against Argentina (even if they didn't have 20 men on the field, the 11 players, the 9 officials and Infantino) because Tuchel is an idiot.

His squad selection was poor to start with, he took all these players with injury issues all season and its already bit us already but his subs apart from the first game have been awful.

Look at today, Rice was clearly struggling so needed to be subbed but Jude is our best player, you play your best player outside their best position, it's like Amorim at United playing Bruno deep. You certainly don't move him back and replace him with Eze who has been poor for Arsenal all season (When Ian Wright is critical of you on thinks like Stick to Football when Wrighty doesn't say negative things about Arsenal players it says alot). And right away we saw suddenly Norway had free rein in the centre of the park because Jude was still trying to get up.

Then he tries to fix that by bringing on James. I know James did play CM for Chelsea at times last season but he isn't a CM and Chelsea weren't great when he was playing there. And most importantly he clearly isn't fit, you could see over and over again he wasn't getting out to players. Why are we putting a RB who isn't fit into CM when we have Mainoo sitting on the bench? Infact when the squad consists of 2 starting CM's and Jude who can drop into there and then Henderson and Mainoo and Mainoo hasn't got a single minute of football thats just ridiculous. Why has he taken a player who he trusts so little he won't give him a single minute? And to fix that it means taking off Gordon who looked good and had just caused the FB an issue moments later moving Eze there so now he had used Eze to move two more effective players out of their position. Just admit you screwed up and take Eze back off ffs. Then when Konsa was clearly struggling you take off O'reilly for Spence, only to then have to take off Konsa 3 minutes later which saw us move James back to RB (where he still was clearly not fit) and brought on an AM to play in the CM/DM role

And finally with them taking Haaland off thus removing their big threat we take off Bellingham and bring on another CB encouraging them. Even when tired Bellingham was doing more to press Norway's midfield and prevent them getting into positions to put the ball in than anyone was able to to do when we added the unnecessary extra CB. We needed another CM to shield and prevent their CM's from freely passing it around not another CB. Again if he doesn't trust Mainoo then why did he pick him and not one of the other CM's he could have brought such as Warton or Garner for example both who would have been good options to cover both Rice and Anderson

 

Well, I've waited 45 years for this, but they do say revenge is a dish best served cold.

"We are the best in the world! We are the best in the world! We have beaten Norway 2–1 in football!! It is completely unbelievable! We have beaten Norway! Norway, birthplace of giants. Roald Amindson, Fred Olson, Erik Thorstvedt, Ole Bjørn Sundgot , Gunnar Halle, Thor Heyerdahl, Princess Ingrid Alexandra – we have beaten them all. We have beaten them all.

"Jonas Gahr Støre can you hear me? Jonas Gahr Støre, I have a message for you. I have a message for you: We have knocked Norway out of the football World Cup. Jonas Gahr Støre, as they say in your language in the bars around Poulsbo, Washington: Guttene dine fikk juling så det holdt! Guttene dine fikk juling så det holdt!"