Premier League Gameweek 26: Overreaction Monday ft. Manchester City and the rest of England

BySiddhant Lazar, SportsCafe Editor

02/17/2020

Overthinking and over-reacting to situations is the human way but when it comes to football rarely does a thought last more than a weekend unless it has something solid backing it. That being said after a packed weekend of incredulous fans in England, there were bound to be a few idiotic debates.

Manchester City were forced to break UEFA’s laws

After Manchester City’s Champions League ban for breaking FFP rules, the Daily Mail’s Martin Samuels took the mike and told the world that City had to break the rules.

SC Take: To say that UEFA asked Manchester City to overspend, overextend themselves, then bring in more money to cover that up and then hide the fact that they did it is simply ridiculous. Nobody can force any club, let alone a side like City, to overspend on anything. City did it all by themselves but more importantly, if UEFA forced them to do it, then why hasn’t anything happened to anyone else? Why hasn’t Manchester United been caught? Or Barcelona? Or Real Madrid? Or anyone else? But more pertinently, why doesn’t any other side, excluding PSG, look like they’re playing with a team that could collapse at any moment? A team that looks like they cannot handle overspending without the Champions League? A team that knows it will struggle without UEFA and yet here we sit.

Liverpool are nothing but the luckiest side in the world

During an episode of Soccer Saturday, Jeff Stelling not just said but outright screamed that Liverpool are nothing more than lucky.

SC Take: This is not just ridiculous but something so much worse than that. While Stelling does admit that Liverpool have been good this season, his argument that results have gone for the Reds more than it has gone against them is nonsensical and border-line crazy. It’s critical to the point that it seems that Jeff hasn’t done any research whatsoever on his take, which seems to be the norm these days.

But a twitter account called the Tactical Times broke down Liverpool’s lucky games (according to Stelling) and in each one, the Reds have not just been dominant but more importantly they’ve been lackadaisical with their play. If anything, it shows how wasteful Liverpool have been and the fact that they could have won by an even larger margin, which points out the fact that no side in the league has adapted to Manchester City the way Liverpool has.

Clear and obvious is no longer clean and obvious

Aston Villa manager Dean Smith has claimed that the measure used to measure clear and obvious is no longer clear and obvious.

SC Take: VAR has changed a lot of things this season especially in the Premier League and while some people claim that the robots have made it even worse, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. If anything, VAR has magnified just how bad the rules are in football and it has also amplified the fact that clear and obvious is no longer clear and obvious. In that fact, Dean Smith is absolutely correct but the situation the Villa boss used it for was wrong because in that incident, Bjorn Engels did make a mistake and the penalty deserved to be given. It’s one of the few decisions that VAR has got unanimously correct but the margin for clear and obvious has not just changed but it’s no longer clear and obvious.

Referees are scared of losing their reputations to VAR

In the same fantastic episode of Soccer Saturday, Phil Thompson this time decided to blurt out that the referees are scared of losing their reputations to VAR.

SC Take: The example Thompson uses is both the Trent Alexander-Arnold hand-ball against Manchester City and Danny Ings’ penalty shout for Southampton. Both instances see Liverpool win the ball back and charge forward to score on the counter. But what Thompson suggests is that if the ball had hit anything but net then the game would have been pulled back and both penalty shouts would have been given. But that’s not the worst bit, he suggests that the refs of this wonderful English world are scared of VAR and thus never handed it over.

Now the referees are anything but scared. Lazy and have let far too many decisions go to VAR? Sure they’re rather good at that but scared? Now that’s the one thing they aren’t. If anything, they’re abiding by the ridiculous laws set out in those hallowed football texts by mostly men and a few women who believe they know better than the rest of the world. If they really did though, would this article even be necessary?