Cardiff 0-2 Liverpool - Sunday 21st April, 2019

[Stan]

3 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

I was merely pointing out his bias like some on here have done with Carragher.

Nah I get that, but the kind of bias is different.

Carragher, in my opinion, goes overboard when talking about Liverpool especially on commentary because it is OTT (but it is understandable given the position Liverpool are in; just annoying as a neutral). 

With Neville you're bound to get some shite spoken about Liverpool. Understandable given the history of his career and probably just how much he hates Liverpool as a result.

[LFCMike]

5 minutes ago, Stan said:

Nah I get that, but the kind of bias is different.

Carragher, in my opinion, goes overboard when talking about Liverpool especially on commentary because it is OTT (but it is understandable given the position Liverpool are in; just annoying as a neutral). 

With Neville you're bound to get some shite spoken about Liverpool. Understandable given the history of his career and probably just how much he hates Liverpool as a result.

You're right, they are different  Carragher's slightly over the top reactions to goals is probably slightly annoying for a neutral but completely natural. Neville's comments yesterday are helping fuel this agenda against Salah despite it being a blatant penalty. There should have never been any debate over it

[Stan]

5 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

You're right, they are different  Carragher's slightly over the top reactions to goals is probably slightly annoying for a neutral but completely natural. Neville's comments yesterday are helping fuel this agenda against Salah despite it being a blatant penalty. There should have never been any debate over it

Blatant is a bit of a stretch, let's be honest. As I said before I think it's a penalty but Salah's made a meal of it with how he's gone down. Just the way he throws himself to the ground is embarrassing, to be honest. He's not the first, not the only one and definitely won't be the last to fall like that.

[Cicero]

People need to put themselves in the players boots. 

Salah is practically getting molested there and the ref is doing fuck all about it. He simply took the initiative and fell over, knowing well he would get a penalty. It's a smart move 

The reactions of some people are as if Salah blatantly dived without any contact. 

[Stan]

1 minute ago, Cicero said:

The reactions of some people are as if Salah blatantly dived without any contact. 

Who? Not seen anyone say there's been no contact...

[Cicero]

2 minutes ago, Stan said:

Who? Not seen anyone say there's been no contact...

I'm saying the reactions are as if.  Look back and there are members criticising Salah for diving again. But when you actually look at the incident,  Salah was practically assaulted there. 

[LFCMike]

15 minutes ago, Stan said:

Blatant is a bit of a stretch, let's be honest. As I said before I think it's a penalty but Salah's made a meal of it with how he's gone down. Just the way he throws himself to the ground is embarrassing, to be honest. He's not the first, not the only one and definitely won't be the last to fall like that.

It is blatant. Anyway, I'm not saying anymore on it

[RandoEFC+]

It was clearly a penalty so I see the complaint against Neville but I still think he's generally pretty impartial. Carragher is usually as well but he gets over excited when he commentates on Liverpool so simply shouldn't really be doing so if they want to be impartial. If Neville is regularly biased against Liverpool I haven't noticed.

And at risk of being too deluded or obsessed with Liverpool I'd also hazard that Salahs dive yesterday was worse than Calvert-Lewin's tumble in the one that's being compared. Still though in terms of the defensive criticism, Morrison is just as stupid if not worse than Lovren in the other incident. *waits for 17000 notifications from the usual suspects who can't accept an opinion that opposes theirs so it must be because I'm an Everton fan*.

[DeadLinesman]

There’s losing your balance from being pulled. Then there’s the involuntary loss of all leg muscles that Salah seems to get whenever he’s touched or grabbed. Letter of the law states penalty and you can’t argue. However, it’s the theatrics of all players I despise. Salah just sells contact very well.

[Dr. Gonzo]

33 minutes ago, Stan said:

Nah I get that, but the kind of bias is different.

Carragher, in my opinion, goes overboard when talking about Liverpool especially on commentary because it is OTT (but it is understandable given the position Liverpool are in; just annoying as a neutral). 

With Neville you're bound to get some shite spoken about Liverpool. Understandable given the history of his career and probably just how much he hates Liverpool as a result.

Yeah but maybe Neville would be playing a different tune if Manchester United weren't really poor since he's been a pundit. If you watch those two clips with those two quotes, it doesn't make him look objective at all.

[Dr. Gonzo]

3 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

And at risk of being too deluded or obsessed with Liverpool I'd also hazard that Salahs dive yesterday was worse than Calvert-Lewin's tumble in the one that's being compared. Still though in terms of the defensive criticism, Morrison is just as stupid if not worse than Lovren in the other incident. *waits for 17000 notifications from the usual suspects who can't accept an opinion that opposes theirs so it must be because I'm an Everton fan*.

one's a player being manhandled, the other is a shite striker taking a tumble as soon as he feels a hand on him - you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm entitled to laugh at it

[LFCMike]

The blues still moan about the Carragher on Lescott one from about 12 years ago (the Clattenburg derby) which is pretty much the same incident as yesterday. Don't ever recall seeing any of them say that Lescott dived though (it was a penalty and Carragher got away with it big time ).

[RandoEFC+]

3 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

one's a player being manhandled, the other is a shite striker taking a tumble as soon as he feels a hand on him - you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm entitled to laugh at it

I know Salahs not been that prolific lately but I wouldn't call him shite .

I'll get my tongue out of my cheek though, in truth diving is one of the most pointless wastes of time as a discussion point these days because nearly every player does it. Where it becomes farcical is how it's dealt with by the officials and the authorities. When there's no foul, sometimes diving gets you just told to get up by the ref, sometimes the ref stops the game and books you, and then if the referee falls for it, suddenly you get a retrospective ban just because the officials fell for it.

Then there's incidents like Salah here, where it's clearly a foul and he goes down to make sure the referee sees it. Players do this in matches during just about every passage of play, go down as soon as they feel contact, leave their trail leg in to make sure they get tripped up, Salah just does a poor job here of aligning his movement to the ground in a manner that's consistent with the force being applied by Morrison so it looks pretty embarrassing but from the dishonesty perspective it's no worse than what players do every few minutes.

Sometimes it seems like a weak argument when people say "If players don't go down the referee won't give the foul" but it's absolutely true and this is a prime example. Also, if that contact happened in front of the linesman in the corner rather than inside the box he'd have been flagging like mad before Salah had to go to ground. It's a weird thing that seems to exist subconsciously amongst officials even though it isn't in the rule book. Like many things it needs clarifying by the ruling bodies.

[Stan]

10 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

When there's no foul, sometimes diving gets you just told to get up by the ref, sometimes the ref stops the game and books you, and then if the referee falls for it, suddenly you get a retrospective ban just because the officials fell for it.

Agreed. The inconsistency across the board is astonishing. Frustrating in equal measure.

[Dr. Gonzo]

10 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I know Salahs not been that prolific lately but I wouldn't call him shite .

I'll get my tongue out of my cheek though, in truth diving is one of the most pointless wastes of time as a discussion point these days because nearly every player does it. Where it becomes farcical is how it's dealt with by the officials and the authorities. When there's no foul, sometimes diving gets you just told to get up by the ref, sometimes the ref stops the game and books you, and then if the referee falls for it, suddenly you get a retrospective ban just because the officials fell for it.

Then there's incidents like Salah here, where it's clearly a foul and he goes down to make sure the referee sees it. Players do this in matches during just about every passage of play, go down as soon as they feel contact, leave their trail leg in to make sure they get tripped up, Salah just does a poor job here of aligning his movement to the ground in a manner that's consistent with the force being applied by Morrison so it looks pretty embarrassing but from the dishonesty perspective it's no worse than what players do every few minutes.

Sometimes it seems like a weak argument when people say "If players don't go down the referee won't give the foul" but it's absolutely true and this is a prime example. Also, if that contact happened in front of the linesman in the corner rather than inside the box he'd have been flagging like mad before Salah had to go to ground. It's a weird thing that seems to exist subconsciously amongst officials even though it isn't in the rule book. Like many things it needs clarifying by the ruling bodies.

Yeah, I used to think it was a weak argument when people said that... but you're right, it's true and that's why players on literally every side do it. Part of it is that referees don't want to get branded as having ruined the match by giving penalties they probably should give, unless the player makes it very obvious for them. Whereas if they give up a free kick outside the box for the same foul, it's less likely that if they've made a mistake they'll immediately have fucked the other side. And if Salah is going to ground more easily this season, I don't really blame him as there are plenty of times he was fouled in the box last season and didn't get the penalty. But there's also examples of goals where he's fouls and stays up on his feet despite the foul in the box to go on and score, when perhaps a dive could have meant an easier goal for him or Milner to score.

I honestly think this instance is different to both the Lovren v Dominic Calvert-Lewin penalty & the Lallana penalty from the match that happened shortly after - both of which I think the instances you could easily classify both Liverpool & Everton players as going down very very very very easily under contact when compared to Salah here. Because after the contact is made, Salah tries taking the ball two directions before going down - Morrison had plenty of time to let go and try to defend without fouling him. Whereas Calvert-Lewin and Lallana just take a tumble as soon as they're touched, and there's an argument that they're going down softly to win those legitimate fouls. But there's also the argument that they're just looking to go to ground as soon as they're touched to get a chance for an easy goal.

[RandoEFC+]

I still think we're seeing different things on that Calvert-Lewin one. Calvert-Lewin is sprinting with a lot of momentum to his right, Lovren comes in and when reasonably firm contact is made pushing Calvert-Lewin to the left, he has both feet off the ground so the only force acting upon him is Lovrens push moving all of his momentum in the opposite direction of where it was going. He also hits the deck flat on his face which is probably something he'd avoid if it was a fully deliberate fall. 

After the contact, Calvert-Lewin puts his right foot down and it's still colliding with Lovren's leg so he can't exactly maintain his balance because he's still getting knocked over. By the time his left leg takes a step he's already at a 45ish degree angle to the ground and a lanky lad running at that speed isn't regaining his balance from that position.

I'll grant that between the two steps, it looks as if he might 'let' his upper body start falling which generates momentum towards the ground, it's not conclusive but it's there. Overall though it's not a dive for me. Lovren's foul on him was less of a foul than what Morrison did to Salah, but Calvert-Lewin's tumble was less of a dive than Salahs. 

Like I've said though, anyone can do it and I don't know why I'm arsed to argue about which shade of grey each individual dive falls under because if Calvert-Lewin stays on his feet there and blazes a shot over, we lose the match 1-0 and Evertonians are muttering that he should have gone down for the penalty because ultimately every one of us is a hypocritical bastard who cares about diving when other teams do it but care more about our team succeeding so defend our own players when they go down easily.

[Dr. Gonzo]

5 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I still think we're seeing different things on that Calvert-Lewin one. Calvert-Lewin is sprinting with a lot of momentum to his right, Lovren comes in and when reasonably firm contact is made pushing Calvert-Lewin to the left, he has both feet off the ground so the only force acting upon him is Lovrens push moving all of his momentum in the opposite direction of where it was going. He also hits the deck flat on his face which is probably something he'd avoid if it was a fully deliberate fall. 

After the contact, Calvert-Lewin puts his right foot down and it's still colliding with Lovren's leg so he can't exactly maintain his balance because he's still getting knocked over. By the time his left leg takes a step he's already at a 45ish degree angle to the ground and a lanky lad running at that speed isn't regaining his balance from that position.

I think he's taking the contact as an excuse to not plant his other foot after the contact so he goes down - like you say, that happens all the time though. Every side does it. I was just giving example of that penalty and the Lallana one because I think those were both pretty soft penalties that we'd probably both be able to remember better than most because it's a Merseyside derby. Also the Calvert-Lewin one's part of that twitter clip I posted so we can watch the clip. I also suspect we've got red/blue tinted glasses on as we watch these clips though.

But we do agree that those type of going down softly under contact happens all the time. I just gave the example to show that unlike those two soft penalties, I think the Salah one was more obviously a foul. And I think you do too, because you say "Lovren's foul on him was less of a foul than what Morrison did to Salah" and I guess I can see what you're saying with it being less of a dive than Salah's. But I also don't see what else Salah's supposed to do in that situation with Morrison holding onto him while he's trying to twist and turn in the box and he won't let go, and the ref isn't calling the obvious foul on Morrison.

I think going down softly is more condemnable in those situations where it's more arguably about whether it's a foul or not. Which is I think why Liverpool fans would be annoyed with Dominic Calvert-Lewin after that Lovren foul or with Lallana going down on the edge on the box after minimal contact from whoever the fuck fouled him in that situation. Honestly, I'm not sure if either were fouls even - it was just funny to get a soft penalty after Fat Sam said "well if you don't want to give up soft penalties, don't put a hand on the player." You can probably make an argument for them being fouls or not - which is why they were more contentious decisions. I think it's MUCH harder to argue that Morrison wasn't fouling Salah here.

[RandoEFC+]

Morrison was fouling Salah. Apart from apparently Gary Neville, I've not seen anyone on here argue otherwise, only mention that Salah threw himself down, which we've been over enough now, I'm getting exhausted by it.