Stoke-on-Bent

I agree with your last line... not the Christmas one... but when players don't treat it as such it lowers the bar for what a ref is expected to blow for. If they kept the game tough but fair then the expectancy of fans on what is foul play and thus act like pussies when someone gets a supposed kicking wouldn't happen at all.

Tony, you're the first person to actually correctly interpret the rules.

Fellaini could and should have been red carded for any one of 3 offences, but wasn't.

The Barton incident was different as he was red carded for an offence, but then refused to leave the field of play and committed further offences. Obviously the referee had seen this, and therefore the FA reaction was a punishment for the further offences committed after the red card was shown.

That's why if a player gets a red when he could've been shown a red earlier, it's the end of the matter.

If the FA interpret their own rules correctly it's a 3 game ban. If they bow to the pressure of a frothing media, full of pundits who clearly don't know the rules they were supposed to play by for years, then they're a fucking joke.

So it'll be a 9 game ban then.

"Osman, Howard both out in new year is a must"...

Christ, here we go again, Ossie bashing, just for one (admittedly big) miss. The rest of his game was on a par with the rest of the team. If we got rid of a player for one miss, we'd have no effing team. Can't we just leave it at that?

I think your right, the rules say it should be 3....but the media won't allow that without an uproar!

How about a 9-weekend MotD ban for Mark Lawrenson as well? Just for being a cunt!! Like the ref on Saturday, somehow the BBC haven't seen it

I think normally Tony you go too far on your criticisms of the team when your making your point, however I can't argue with anything above.

Hopefully Fellaini will get only a 3 game ban with one of them used up in the cup. Anymore, the FA will be accused of taking violent conduct more serious than racial abuse. Yes, every team will get battered at Stoke but why should they? Remember them at Goodison last year, they wouldn’t take throw-ins, free kicks or goal kicks if there was 3 or 4 passes completed by us they would foul just to break up play or momentum.

The Howard and Osman issue, well Moyes doesn’t trust Barkley yet and the fact Osman is the first name on the team sheet every week isn’t going to help. And were we seriously looking at Butland? I hope so.

Tony, whilst I agree with some of your points, I have been reading various media articles on Saturdays game, with particular reference to Fellainis' stupidity. There would appear to be a groundswell of opinion, from journos and readers, that the amount of shirt pulling/grabbing/wrestling that Stoke use as a major tactic in their somewhat limited approach to football was the underlying reason for Fellainis rush of blood.

Martin Samuel has written a very good piece, highlighted on another thread, that points the finger at Shawcross et al and suggests that that sort of defending is ruining the game, along with the referees' myopia in failing to spot what is so evident to every bugger in the crowd. IF the FA decides to address this problem then clubs visiting the Brittania from now on might appreciate a greater level of protection than Fellaini did on Saturday.

Don't get me wrong, I think the game is racing toward a non-contact conclusion that is at odds with my own thoughts on football, ie, it's a man's game, get on with it... but let's all play by the same rules, eh? If Fellaini was guilty of holding at the Etihad which resulted in a penalty, what the fuck was Shawcross doing on Saturday? And to rub salt in the wound, AGAINST Fellaini.

This sort of "defending", where the defender looks at the player and has his back to the ball, is a nonsense. They have no interest in anything other than stopping the forward from doing his job and by unfair means. What happened to the old adage about keeping your eye on the ball?

Pulis has done nothing but whinge about bad decisions against Stoke but if all the grappling perpetrating from Shawcross were to be dealt with in accordance to FA rules, Stoke would be below Reading.

Tony Marsh

You say that " football fans are turning into a bunch of crying bastards" I hope you include yourself in that group.

You could moan for England if it was in the Olympics, apart from one post a few weeks back every other post has been a moan. Nothing constructive about how you would change things, just moan ,moan moan, bet you must be a barrel of laughs to go for a pint with.

Brian Harrison @ 621:

Yes, I do moan about my own club and I do have a pop... but moaning about the way other teams set out to play is irellavent. While we are all focused on Stoke or whoever else we decide we don't like, we get away from the real issues of our own club.

I don't give a shit how crap Stoke are or who their players are, it's none of my concern. We all have to endure a visit to the Brittania once a year and that's that. I know, let's kick them out of the Premier League because they are too rough and don't play fair. FFS, the game has been watered down and sanitised so much that it will end up like a game of off ground tick soon.

If you want non contact sport go and watch tennis,golf or darts maybe. Football is being ruined and sometimes we need a Wimbledon, Leeds Utd or a Stoke Type just to spice things up. Have you seen how crap continental footy is to watch? Alice bands, greasy Barnetts but no tackling... It's shite.

By the way, I am fucking hilarious to go for a pint with... Cheers

It's typical that the refs are now planning to do something about the "holding".......right AFTER our game. How about doing your job before it gets brought to the whole countries attention?

Watch us get a pen against us this week for holding, it's a knapp.

Love the way Stoke City players are trying to blame Everton for everything.

Confirmed, 3 match ban. Just announced.

Stoke are a horrible side to watch and they don't play fair and they are all too tall and they push and grab and hold our players and they kick it really hard and they stand on our toes.....

Sorry Tony ....Miaow..Miaow..

I'm not so fussed about how Stoke play, rather how narrow they are allowed to have their pitch. The width forced all the play into the centre where all the argy bargy took place, and that's their game plan. Fine.

But if all teams had to play on the same width of pitch, all teams would have a better chance of more open play and getting behind teams like Stoke, at Stoke.

All professional snooker is played on a 12 x 6 foot table. In football it seems the length and width of a pitch is determined by the talent on it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/rules_and_equipment/4200666.stm

Discuss?

Size matters. http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/Stoke-City-Pulis-pitch-battle-UEFA/story-13033880-detail/story.html

Lyndon answered a question I posted before Fulham away and he said

" New Premier League rules instituted this season state that all pitches have to be 105m x 68m, per Uefa regulations.

I think one of the rationales for the change was specifically so clubs could not vary the width of the pitch when facing different teams."

So Stoke is the same as everyone else unless they've ignored that rule too.

Let's stop crying about Stoke's system of marking from corners and free kicks, they are doing what nearly everyone in all walks of life does: simply bend the rules as far as they can until they are pulled up, told to stop, and if they don't stop, they will receive the appropriate punishment.

The problem is with the officials who have allowed this type of defending go on for too long by trying to seem they are stopping it by warning players before the kick is taken and turning a blind eye after the kick. On a talk show I watched a senior referee tried to explain the match official tried to keep his eye on one area and missed Fellaini's head butt; however, this incident showed plainly 2 other Stoke players with arms wrapped around Everton players. One pundit said this was obstruction but the other (I believe was A Curbishley) said No — it is a penalty.

Nobody who calls themselves a football supporter will condone Fellaini's actions but the one good thing that may come out of this is the match officials may be instructed to get some backbone and stop this infringement of the RULES and start calling penalties and showing red cards.

Missed that Patrick. Seems the Gunners were commenting on it too. More stats in here. http://arsenalarsenal.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/rule-change-will-stymie-stoke-in-arsenals-favour/ I just thought we didn't get wide and behind them enough times to get them turning.

As the home team Tony, surely you do everything to give yourself the upper hand to win the game, and if that means having a narrow pitch to benefit your style of play, you do it, it was like when teams would heavily water the pitch before a game because it suited them. Also, wouldn't the likes of Stoke having to have a wider pitch, then take away that home advantage for them, and give the advantage to the teams who play free flowing, quick football.

hi Brian, I thought the PL was the best league in the world where all the teams were able to play free flowing, quick football attracting audiences from all over the world to witness such a spectical. Is this what Sky are paying £30m to each PL team for or what we witnessed at the weekend?

I watched the full game not just the highlights. From start to finish, both Fellaini and Jelly were held by the Stoke centre backs. When I say 'held' I don't mean a tug here and pull there. Shawcross was stood behind Fellaini with both hands around his waist, the hands joined and at other times both hands around the top of Fellaini's upper arm. Jelly got similar treatment and both players went and complained to the referee numerous times. The response that they got from the ref was, well, he just laughed at them.

A couple of matches back, Fellaini gave away a penalty for a brief tug on a defender waiting for a corner. You couldn't make it up. Yes he foolishly took things into his own hands. No, he shouldn't have done it... but something needs to be done about holding in the penalty area. Why can you do that in the penalty area but outside the area a foul would be given every time???

I first started taking real notice of this offence during the last World Cup, defenders were doing it all the time and I could not believe my eyes. It would be a simple thing to stop, you just give a penalty every time the refs see it. After a couple of weeks, this offence would disappear but for some strange reason the authorities condone it, we'll, the exception to the unwritten rule is when it's an Everton player who does it.

All the holing by the Stoke defenders got not one once of coverage, anybody who watched Match of the Day would have been left with the impression that Fellaini just decided to nut Shawcross for no reason at all. I also think that a lot of the journalists reporting on the game had simply watched Match of the Day.

I don't condone what Fellaini did but people are only human after all and people will reach a point when they snap. Didn't we bomb the shit out of Germany after what they did to us. We gave it back ten fold and gave the people who did it medals. It's a funny old world.

Tony, except for your bit about Jelavic I echoed your comments in other posts.

Nikita is following the same path as all other strikers who came under Moyes influence.
I wondered how long it would be before Nikita would spend most of his time chasing hopeless balls down the wings.
Didn't take long did it.

Can imagine the Refs weekly meeting before Christmas:

"Well lads, everyone is aware of Stoke's shite tactics now, no point adopting the attitude of 'yeah but it's Stoke, ignore it. So here's the plan: Liverpool have been screaming over a lack of penalties, they play each other on Boxing Day. Sorted, whoever has that game do not show your face here again if the scoreline doesn't read Stoke 0 (reduced to 9 men) Liverpool 3 (Gerrard 3 pens). Understand boys?"

On Tony's opinions, I'm more worried over Howard than Osman, but yes, it's a chance to see Ross alongside Gibson. However, Osman playing behind Jelavic, might see some decent little through passes to the hitman.

Just a thought amidst this insanely unfair and unbalanced treatment of a player who has played really well for 90% of the games he has played this season.

Foul-mouthed fatuous rancid rant.
A man's game? What about football? The Stoke defenders weren't holding Everton forwards; Shawcross wasn't holding Fellaini. He was hugging him. Hands all the way round the body, and hands clasped.

Is that what you call manly?

Agree on howard. He is very very suspect and needs replacing too many constant errors.

Marshy, the Stoke defence was a cross between come dancing and WWE wrestling. That is not football nor manly.

I have to disagree with you on Ossie. He has more creative moments than Pienaar or Coleman and has scored some crackers for us at times. Yes, it was an atrocious miss but he is not alone in that.

Stoke is a difficult game to guage so I think we should wait and see how the next three games go without Felli and Mirallas. If Everton are going to do anything this season, Xmas will tell us all we need to know about the character of the squad.

It's not the Stoke game that irritates me most. You know what you're getting when you play them and the game panned out exactly how most of us thought it would. It's the Newcastle home, Norwich home, QPR away, Wigan away and Reading away games that really piss me off. We can moan about ref decisions but in all those games our second half performances were utter shite and we should have won them easily despite the ref's performance.

This season will pan out like every other season under Moyes - average and potless. We can all rejoice in another 8th placed finish despite this being Moyes' 'best ever squad'.

Aidan
Everton were not shite in all those second halves. We scored three times and fairly so against Newcastle in the second half, were down to ten men - unfairly so - in second half v QPR, were the best team in second half v Wigan. In the first two we were clearly robbed by poor refereeing.

I'll give you the other two, but even then, you're only moaning about half a game. We have deserved at least 30 points so far. It hasn't evened out yet. If it eventually does, we'll be challenging, no doubt about it.

Brent 614. The point about Osman is the amount of times he has a golscoring opportunity only to waste it through missing the target or more usually, striking the ball with all the power of an anaemic oap.
If hed spent more time in shooting practise he would have been a quality player .

Andy, I'm sure that might be the point. But I just think that his positives far outweigh his negatives. And every one of our players has his negatives but we can't get shot of the lot.

When I first started looking at TW early this year I was taken aback by the level of vitriol expressed against Osman and some others. Not that I was a great Osman fan. To me he was just another EFC player. It was just the way some expressed their hostility that surprised me. I thought maybe I was missing something and he was worse than I'd thought.

So I've been watching him closely every game. Every time he touches the ball I'm mentally noting and totalling the times he receives, controls, shields from an opponent, passes. And I had been missing something. His tally is consistently high, every game. And generally successful and often incisive passes (so it's not just the stats but the quality).

And his constant keeping the game going, at high tempo (receive, control, pass; receive, control pass; etc) linking defence and attack, quick, going forward (not the Rodwell three touches then passing sideways or back).

And that's without his running without the ball, as I also watch that as well. His jockeying back to close off opposition players; his running forward and wide to offer himself for a pass.

His challenges for headers is weak (I expect no more of a short guy - cf little curly Alan Ball). His shooting is weak (I keep thinking surely he can sort that, it's not a matter of size! but I guess he scores as many as many other non-strikers). It's just that watching him closely, on balance I just see so many positives, consistently.

But that fucking miss at Stoke! Jeez!

Should the crackdown on Stoke begin, over their next 6 matches they play five teams around us:
Spurs; RS; City; Chelsea; Swansea; then Arsenal soon after.

Brilliant...

Great piece, Tony. But the only thing I can take issue with is the bit where you said about Fellaini and it's nothing we haven't seen before... Well, I'm afraid that's not true, pal. I've seen Ferguson act like a complete gobshite a few times. But that from Fellaini on Saturday took the biscuit.

That idiot is so easy to rile, it's untrue. I'll bet you Allardyce, Martinez, and the fat Spanish fucker are licking their lips at him being out against their sides as they obviously view him as being our biggest threat — not a view I share, by the way. It personally wouldn't bother me if he's played his last game for us... although I do think he'll at least stay to the summer. Other than that, a great article — and I'll have a pint with you anytime, mate.

Why is nobody looking at Shawcross in this incident?

I'm sorry but Fellaini boring his head into Shawcross should not have led to him being poleaxed on the floor like that. In my book that was not a headbutt and certainly not one that could poleaxe a six-foot plus central defender like Shawcross. Not only was he fouling Fellaini, when Fellaini bores into him he fabricates a head injury by lying on the floor and rolling around as if semi conscious. Disgraceful.

In future, if players lie on the floor and shout and scream and roll around, à la Suarez, the referee should not allow them to return to the field unless triaged in a local A&E department as a matter of pure risk management.

This goes on every week in football. In rugby the outcry when Harlequins feigned a blood injury to bring back Nick Evans on to the field led to significant bans and the termination of some very promising careers. I'm not excusing headbutting. The whole incident was sheer gamesmanship.

"Why is nobody looking at Shawcross in this incident?"
----------------------------------

Is that sarcasm?

Shawcross' actions have been the entire theme of the week!

Thanks Ciaran, what do you think of the A & E suggestion?

I don't agree with the suggestion that Shawcross rolled around the floor either Kevin... It's pretty much accepted that he got up without a fuss...

However, I certainly agree on the point you're making... It's been going on quite a while now. Klinsmann was a master at it...

However, It does provide a degree of entertainment, especially whenever Phil Neville does it.

Ciaran, he got up without a fuss because his team mate dragged him up by his shirt. He was down for a good number of seconds as the play went on around him.

Kevin, Shawcross was doing what he always has done, it's just that this time it affected one of our own so I don't see how we can be all high and mighty about it.

Regarding all the shirt pulling in this thread I've often wondered (only with about 25% seriousness) why teams don't have shirts made out of some kind of toughened paper; strong enough to not fall apart when it rains or when the players sweat but still weak enough to be torn from the player when someone hangs on to his shirt.

If the attacking player has a hole in his shirt while the defender has a handful of his shirt then a no brainer for the ref.

As I say, not all in jest.

Vince, that's brilliant! I'd set up your (paper) kit company now. We could have some of the national papers as kit sponsors. They could put their names on the kit and the day's news headlines. If we got bored with the game, we could read about politics, or page 3.

I assume you'd extend this to shorts as well? Daily Mail, my arse.

Can we not just paint the kit on for the Stoke game?

Ciaran, I think you'll find Shawcross was down for more than 10 seconds. And if you watch the incident on youtube you'll see what a crap attempt at a headbutt it was. It wouldn't put my Nan down, let alone a 6ft 3ins self-styled hardman. He'd still be on his hands and knees grazing if an embarrassed team mate hadn't hauled him up. Let's drop all this shite about Shawcross not making a meal of it. The fact that he went down is doing just that.

Ian, paint the kit on! That's as good as Vince's paper shirts. Different coloured paints if we're away and there's a colour clash. As I remember it, Spike Milligan, in Puckoon, had his main character painting his shoes different colours depending on the circumstances. White when it was snowing I think. Would Crown Paints come in and sponsor us? "Spraying it all over the park" takes on a different meaning. Undercoat in the winter. The Manager would probably put a gloss on a poor performance.