Re: Barclay's Premier League
rtotheizzo17 said:
So the season is a 1/3, 1/2? over and I have watched at least one game a week, and usually watch 2 of the 3 games played on NBCSN here in the States.
My thoughts are ultimately this, there is no doubt these guys are athletic, and can do some talented stuff with a football, but man are they a bunch of pussies running around the pitch.
I think scoring could be up 20% if players would stay on their feet instead of flopping and flailing everytime another player got near. Guys are giving up on plays to draw fouls and set up set pieces that work <5% of the time.
Ironically enough my favorite sport, Ice Hockey, had a display that is the exact opposite of a soccer player performance this week. Kevin Klien of the New York Rangers, LOST PART OF HIS EAR, had it sewed back on right on the bench, and later scored the game winning goal. I have seen soccer players lie on the ground for 10 minutes after phantom trips.
TLDR: Soccer players are athletic vaginas.
This is a slightly unfair generalisation, especially with some of the lower league players who you certainly wouldn't want to mess with (a certain Claude Davis comes to mind)...
It is a problem within the game, but has become part of the tactics in several ways... The soft contact causing players to flop over is allowed, and as a result is used on a constant basis by pretty much every team... When I see certain 'fouls' given it can be somewhat hilarious or embarassing...
It's also not helped by inconsistent refereeing, which has been of a ridiculously poor standard this year throughout for pretty much all the teams... Always seems to be a stand-out incident every week (the Man City penalty last weekend for example)... So there are so many factors that need looking at to improve the game as a whole, again, something FIFA seem so unlikely to do...
The ideal way to deal with it would be of course to start issuing bans post game to players found to have dived/cheated/etc based off an independent panel, but FIFA are so stuck in their ways that such things that would actually be of benefit to the game are ignored because MONEY...
As for Palace, a weird mix of results so far this year, unfortunately the lack of a big centre forward who can both hold up play like Chamakh and score like Gayle meant the last two games went badly... However that Liverpool game was fab, especially when Jedi thundered the "Best Free Kick I've Seen at Selhurst" in...