General Premier League Thread 2022-23 - mod note in OP 12/03/23

Villa lining up Poch and if they can get him they are dead right to get rid of Gerrard.

Gerrard will never make it as a top level manager.

7/4 favourite to be next Liverpool manager

Saw this on another site last night, from OptaJoe :

There have been seven red cards shown to players in the Premier League this season, the fewest in any of Europe's big five leagues.

43 - Ligue 1 (110 games)

35 - La Liga (89 games)

19 - Serie A (98 games)

18 - Bundesliga (90 games)

7 - Premier League (97 games)

Huge discrepancy in the refereeing standards between the EPL and the other leagues. Pretty obvious the EPL Officials have taken the 'let it flow' even further this year. Seems every other league is wrong, the little englanders going their own way for the sake of it. Yesterday it was very clear, Taylor and his linesmen just didn't referee the game at all, ignored numerous fouls and seemed to be waiting for someone to get hurt before intervening. It's clear why there are little or no referees involved in the really big European or FIFA games any more.

Let it flow for the sake of it, is it supposed to be entertaining? To paraphrase Eamonn Dunphy 'If you want entertainment, go to the pictures'

There's no objective way to say that every red card incident around the world is the same, short of FIFA having a panel of experts to go through every single red card in every single game and having to reach a consensus, which is never going to happen because you are never going to get everyone to agree that every single incident is a red card.

The reds could be for second yellows, mouthing off or what have you. It's all down to the interpretation of the ref. There's no way of saying that every ref is going to have x amount of red card incidents per game or that they should be sending off a player every x number of games.

The stats show that there are less red cards per game in the Premier League but they don't definitively prove that English refs 'let the game flow'. You could also use those stats to argue the opposite: that the other leagues are overly zealous and the Premier League has the 'right' number of red cards or that players in Ligue 1 and La Liga are 'dirtier' than other leagues. There are far too many variables involved. Football isn't an exact science.

'Letting the game flow' in itself is a vague term. We know it means not giving as many frees and being more lenient but how is that calculated? Every week people are complaining about decisions and there are disagreements so its not as clear cut as it needs to be. Is there some exact formula that referees have to apply when there's an incident and they have to rate it on a scale of 1-10? With 4 being the cut off point in the EPL whereas in the Bundesliga and Serie A its 3 and in La Liga and Ligue 1 its 2?

Anecdotally, it's something that's been said for years and these stats appear to back it up but there's no solid basis to it. I'm sure if you were to look hard enough you could find stats to prove some other nebulous idea, like saying the league with the lowest goals per game is the most boring but that same stat could also be used to suggest that that league has the best defenders. While interesting, the stats prove nothing; they just reinforce lazy generalisations.

Letting it flow is just an attempt to appease barstool experts and old men shouting at clouds who bang on about "football being a non contact sport these days" and "soft unlike back in my day"

Liverpool can come back into contention but the task is definitely made more difficult that the current top 4 are well managed and look to all have strong squads. It looks like a bad year to start your season slowly.

A pity the Arsenal vs City has been postponed as I would have liked to Arsenal put more pressure on City after there loss to Liverpool on Sunday and Arsenal in flying form.

The rearranged game will only be a benefit to City.

Same I'm losing 6 players out of my squad.

Atmosphere the Camp nou is pants 99% of the time excluding El Classico of course

I used to frequently go to games there about 15 years ago & trust me its nothing on atmospheres in England, they have one song & it goes Barca ,Barca barca,

I actually think having a home ground with less atmosphere helps his way of football its far more clinical than emotional ,

I often feel like there’s a correlation between what happens Pep at Anfield and Pep in the latter stages of the Champions League. Like Klopp, he’s an emotional guy and you can see that from the way he carries himself on the side-line most weekends, but with Pep it’s an underhanded controlled emotion where he’s leading his orchestra with erratic looking hand signals and he cuts the most frustrated figure if one pass is not complete to his liking. Because Pep’s style of play is very much intentional and has purpose, every 5 yard pass that doesn’t seem like much to us at that time has a purpose to the end result.

However at Anfield he seems to go from a controlled emotional to madman most years!! And when Pep loses control is definitely has a direct impact on what’s happening on the field in front of him…How often do we see KDB just lob aimless free kicks into the keeper hands. He did it 3 times in the 2nd half against Liverpool.

Wolves now in talks with Peter Bosz who was sacked two weeks ago by Lyon.

Leicester City really must be broke as Rodger’s would be gone by now if they could afford to pay him off.

I guess a £10m + lump sum is lot.

I wonder what kind of pay off Gerrard will get as he is less than a year into the job.

I always look forward to midweek PL games. But they can’t seem to ever put a half decent one on the Tuesday night.

He's decided to go full cúnt, obviously thinks the premier league needs a prominent heel figure.