The Football News Thread 2020/21

[Deutsch Wolf]

I'll give you the left one. The right still looks like he's stepped on some unfortunate piece of wildlife.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

It's just the perspective making the tongue almost disappear that makes it look a bit odd.

 

[Sniffer]

Sunderland being taken over again.

Sunderland agree takeover deal with 22-year-old Louis-Dreyfus heir

The Sunderland owner, Stewart Donald, has agreed a deal to sell the club to a consortium led by minority shareholder Juan Sartori and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus - the 22-year-old son of former Marseille owner Robert - but looks set to retain 15% of his shares

www.theguardian.com

 

[Tyrannosaurus Dan]

Hopefully it is somebody who will actually invest in the club properly. They should get a new manager in too, Parkinson is useless.

 

[lemonjelly]

salah has tested positive for covid apparently. if it can go wrong it will for liverpool at the moment.

 

[Kenny]

salah has tested positive for covid apparently. if it can go wrong it will for liverpool at the moment.

Probably should have avoided mingling with a load of folk at his brothers wedding

 

[BillyDee]

Fans to return in December? Will be linked to the tier system.

Fans return to matches: Government exploring potential return for December

The government is exploring the potential for fans to return to sports venues in some parts of England as early as next month.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Tredman]

Would be amazing, but really can't see the West Mids getting out of Tier 2 or 3 anytime soon.

Does that then create an unfair premier league? Having fans at home games is a boost for a team.

 

[Tony Towner]

Would be amazing, but really can't see the West Mids getting out of Tier 2 or 3 anytime soon.

Does that then create an unfair premier league? Having fans at home games is a boost for a team.

Depends on how many I think. Not sure 8k in a 32k stadium would have much of a difference. The NFL has about a 50/50 split between no fans and some limited numbers. The lack of home field advantage is mirroring football and the teams with limited numbers aren't particularly bucking that trend

 

[Tredman]

Chris Sutton talking very eloquently about the consequences of heading footballs and his father, an ex-footballer, who has suffered from dementia.

Long term very difficult to see how heading can be justified.

 

[Johnny75]

There needs to be huge education on this.
I'm glad there's an awareness but we have to be careful and the amount of plain wrong information out there is startling.

As Geoff Hurst said it's not the heading of the ball that's wrong, it's how it's done and how often.

Heading is an important skill and should be taught much like tackling in rugby. It's important to get that right and with the right equipment.

 

[Paul]

Because you would have thought that centre halves would be exponentially more prone to it so you wonder how many cases go unrecorded?

 

[pacamac]

Saw it reported yesterday EFL going to 5 subs.

Wonder if the Prem will follow suit

 

[Tony Towner]

If you take the England 66 side as representative, it's all over the pitch a forward, 2 midfielders, centre half and full back

 

[Tredman]

There needs to be huge education on this.
I'm glad there's an awareness but we have to be careful and the amount of plain wrong information out there is startling.

As Geoff Hurst said it's not the heading of the ball that's wrong, it's how it's done and how often.

Heading is an important skill and should be taught much like tackling in rugby. It's important to get that right and with the right equipment.

That was part of what Sutton was saying, but how can you realistically reduce heading? And if you artificially reduce it, but still see consequences then that only ends in a ban.

 

[Johnny75]

That was part of what Sutton was saying, but how can you realistically reduce heading? And if you artificially reduce it, but still see consequences then that only ends in a ban.

No need to artificially reduce it and I can understand where Sutton is coming from. It's the same sort of place Shearer is too. I guess the difficulty is explaining to a wider audience that it is likely to be CTE and not the dementia that is familiar to most folks. That it is the repeated heading of a heavy object that has damaged the brain and unlikely to happen outside of a professional setting. That's why it is good to hear that Geoff Hurst will donate his brain for the study.

The ball has been a crucial development over the years along with technique and conditioning. No longer are players heading a 2kg wet object coming at them at 50mph every 2 minutes in training or every 5 minutes in a game. The opposite of what is happening in rugby and American football where the energy in the collision is increasing and not decreasing as well as the severity going down the occurrence is also reducing in football compared to games in the past.

Kids training for heading can be done with soft balls to get technique right as well as learning when to header or not and strangely enough the child's brain is much better at coping with impacts than an adult brain.

 

[Tony Towner]

Bournemouth are top of the league which is disappointing. I'd hoped they were gone for good. There's a decent chance the 3 that went down will all come back up

 

[PuntsWolf]

Bournemouth made loads from the sales of Wilson and Ake yet already had championship level replacements already in the squad. So that’s taken the financial pressure off and the championship is just really poor nowadays. The gap is huge.

 

[SSB]

Preston defender Darnell Fisher could face an investigation from the FA after appearing to grab the genitals of Sheffield Wednesday's Callum Paterson.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1330558599693799433

 

[Sniffer]

The motoring charges against Squealish are stacking up...

West Midlands Police said in June that Grealish had been charged with three offences, including failing to stop at the scene of an accident, connected to an incident during lockdown on March 29 this year.

Grealish was charged with driving his Range Rover carelessly at the scene in Dickens Heath, near Solihull, and failing to report the accident, in which damage was caused to a Citroen van and a Mercedes.

West Midlands Police also confirmed a further charge had been brought relating to October 18.

The fourth allegation accuses the winger of driving without due care and attention on the M42, the A446 and on Bodymoor Heath Road, the site of Villa’s training complex.