I'm showing my age but Premier League football is awash with big soft lads who go down in a mild breeze and when someone waves at them from the crowd. I hate to see the practice of forwards deliberately kicking a defender's leg and going down like they have been shot by a sniper in the stands.A red card and public flogging should be the automatic punishment.Bloody jessies.
Quote from: SteveN on January 18, 2018, 04:17:15 PMI'm showing my age but Premier League football is awash with big soft lads who go down in a mild breeze and when someone waves at them from the crowd. I hate to see the practice of forwards deliberately kicking a defender's leg and going down like they have been shot by a sniper in the stands.A red card and public flogging should be the automatic punishment.Bloody jessies.Well said. The other one is where a player deliberately jumps/steps into the path of another player so contact is inevitable, but they invariably get the foul. It should be given the other way.
I'm with ColinMac, VAR should be restricted to offside decisions and other "black and white" issues. Penalty shouts and straight red card decisions for out of control challenges will always be debateable and it is common for opinions to vary even after many replays. As for the "diving" well I hate it but the problem is it has become acceptable, especially abroad, for players to "emphasise" contact by going to ground. In those cases it is still a dive, but sometimes as a means of drawing the refs attention to an actual case of being impeded. Whilst the "there was contact so he's entitled to go down" mantra absolutely sickens me, I do happen to think the hands on Morata did possibly impede his progress. Refs don't tend to give fouls for that though, so the only way a player might get the foul is by going to ground. It tends to work in other leagues and countries, and sometimes here. But as last night showed, not always. It's also debateable as to whether the contact on Willian was enough to impede his progress, let alone bring him down, yet the pros were all saying clear pen. I'm happy to see any exaggeration of contact go unrewarded, or even penalised. It is still meant to be a contact sport. Personally I think a lot of the problems emanate from abolishing indirect free kicks for obstruction, which is what I would describe the Morata incident as.