Inverted

I don't know what the ethics rules say for refs, but in the legal system bias and apparent bias are almost always lumped together as effectively equivalent, for the exact reason you can see with fans now scouring over Coote's entire record of decisions. It's impossible to read someone's mind and tell whether a decision was actually because of bias or not. So, when a clear appearance of bias exists, it is all basically the same from an outsider's POV. Every single decision is just as much a candidate as the other to be tainted by bias. And that's not an indictment on the fans for being paranoid, because (again) they have no way of reading Coote's mind and knowing which decisions he made because he doesn't like Liverpool. All they can ever know is that potentially any of them could have been. And that's why professional organisations, which need their decisions to be taken seriously, take the appearance of bias just as seriously as bias itself.

That last minute of the officiating is the kind of thing that makes people believe refs are trying to engineer results. The entire game was a series of potential fouls brushed off as "looking for contact" and then the fairest 50/50 you'll see in your life is blown as a foul in order to get the losing side back down the other end of the pitch, in the last minute. The refs want to be the ones that make the spectacle.

I actually can't believe the ref has finally given one.

Five centre backs and two holding mids. Arteta is redefining terrorism.

If the criteria they're working by are "find expensive, cocky hotheads who regularly get spanked by their close rivals" then United's scouts might possibly be the best in the world.

The football gods will continue to punish England so long as they insist on putting Kane at risk of winning a trophy.

This seems like the closest that Foden's gotten to playing his usual Man City inside forward position and it's showing in the performance.

Either the force of his follow-through catching Dumfries naturally threw him down to the floor in agony. Or it didn't, and he he went down to get a decision. The latter is what's known as a dive.

He went down and exaggerated the contact, which is likely what provoked the VAR review. It's a textbook dive.

The quality of the penalty and the dive to get it are basically the main reason you pick Kane at this point.

Some more classic defensive solidity from Walker, there.

Slovakia have gone very deep very early. They've already been defending for most of the last 10 minutes and still have about 15 to go. Quite risky.

Alexander-Arnold had people foaming at the mouth for misplacing a few passes in midfield and Stones, Walker and Tripper are playing like they're in a K-hole ffs.

England have a generational fullback that Real Madrid are tapping up and they've got Walker and Trippier out there getting rinsed by Eastern Bloc randos.

I've got England in the work sweepstakes so I can't even enjoy this. Liven up Southgate you toothy prick.