West Ham Vs Southampton, Sun 26th Dec - Kick off 3pm

Dodger58

Both the Chelsea penalties were justified - I haven’t seen the Norwich one

Fortuneseeker

There is also an alleged stamp by Saka to look at that wasn’t reviewed on VAR!

BubblesNeverDies

Just watched MOTD and how on earth was that a free-kick against Soucek that led to their third goal. Walker-Peters just threw himself against him.

thornburyiron

Interesting that Moyes thought we were rubbish so hope that gets through to the players

Brother_Sledge

FlorinRaduclious said:

eskimoking said:

Contact starts outside? Hasn’t that always been a thing?

Sorry, can we hark back to this?!

This seemed to almost go uncommented on. Obviously a clear foul, but the push occurred miles outside the box, then they fell onto each other in the box! It should 100% been a free kick outside the box.

However, admittedly a chance of a red for being last man, but minimum yellow. But def a FK and not a pen.

Really annoyed about this.

Also when ref goes to the monitor he is just shown the contact in the box not the initial push and subsequent stumble. Never a penalty for me

Lukerz

I’m not one to focus too much on stats, but the numbers are there to see where the issue is. We have won 1 league game since Ogbonna got injured (Chelsea) & won 0 league games since Zouma joined him. You can also look at that & say 1 league win since Cresswell got injured.

Before the Ogbonna injury, we had won 4 league games in a row (Everton, Spurs, Villa, Liverpool), conceding 3 goals in those 4, two clean sheets. The back four was Johnson - Zouma - Ogbonna - Cresswell.

In the same way Liverpool went on & on & on about missing VVD last season, we can equally say those two CBs (mainly), plus the loss of Cresswell, has had a significant impact on our season. Dawson & Diop as a supporting CB are quite capable & we’d probably not lost as many games with one of them playing, but without the leadership of Ogbonna or Zouma (& quality) they are way out of their depth as a pairing.

It’s a shame, but we do really need a dominant CB to come in January. I think the forward players have suffered mainly from that lack of structure at the back. The forward balls from Dawson & Diop are not as good as those threaded passes from Ogbonna & Cresswell (both natural left side options) which opened up space in the Fornals/Benrahma area. The defence are also not as secure, so that lack of confidence means we spend a lot more time sitting deep, giving away corners & throw ins, on the edge of the box, meaning counter attacks have to be almost perfect every time for us to get up the pitch. When we do retain possession, it tends to be across the back four. We are going periods of games now without the ball, earlier in the season we had a lot more dominance on games.

This is a mini slump but, to be fair, 4 losses in our last 7 league games looks bad but 3 of those have been to Wolves (a), City (a), Arsenal (a). We’ve had another tough run of games. Ironically, yesterday was meant to signal the start of a slightly easier set of four fixtures but we blew it. We now have 3 golden opportunities to get back on track with Watford, Palace & Leeds (x2). All tough games in their own right but we need to be looking, IMO, to win them all but we are going to need to defend far better than we have of late & almost reclaim a bit of the arrogance we had at the start of the season. The side is tentative & passive all over the pitch at the moment & Moyes needs to find a tactical balance to limit the obvious weaknesses of some of the players we have out there as well as giving our better players a chance to find form. It’s refreshing hearing him say ‘we were rubbish today’ with brutal honesty but he also needs to help find the solution with the players.

Lukerz

Also, with VAR. What was the original decision yesterday? Was it a foul outside the box? If so was there a clear & obvious area to overrule the decision? The referee must have known the player fell into the box? Secondly, why did VAR not show the referee the initial physical shoulder barge by Dawson which was probably the original foul? Why did it only replay the collision in the box & make that available to him?

For me, as usual, VAR is not worth the hassle & I would rather it be scrapped for everything apart from identifying clear offside errors.

MrsGrey

It's almost like they are deliberately messing it up so that they can get rid of VAR without any backlash.

#conspiracy

Jorderz_Moyes_will_be_Moyes

I’d understood that the original collision between Dawson and the attacker (which was outside the box) wasn’t actually the foul.

The foul was Dawson taking out his legs when he fell.

ASLEFshrugged

Pure genius from West Ham clips (warning, its a bit sweary)

"Well, as you can see the foul clearly starts outside the box meaning it should be a free kick. However the on-field referee is currently watching an episode of ... Peppa Pig"

https://twitter.com/WestHamClips/status/1475427996379009026

claretandbluesky

On the Dawson incident I think that the original conduct was shoulder to shoulder instigated by Dawson but due to that Dawson fell and did so into the back of the players legs. I think it's a penalty on one count that the first contact was not a foul but just contact but the second contact when he fell into his legs was a foul.

Antonio's goal looked very close regard offside also and could have easily gone either way on another day.

ASLEFshrugged

Under Law 12: Fouls and Misconduct a direct free kick or penalty is awarded if

"a player commits any of the following offences against an opponent in a manner considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force"

Dawson was knocked off balance by his challenge outside the box and he fell over into the back of Broja's legs but I don't see how that was "careless, reckless or using excessive force",

alderz

ASLEFshrugged said:

Under Law 12: Fouls and Misconduct a direct free kick or penalty is awarded if

"a player commits any of the following offences against an opponent in a manner considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force"

Dawson was knocked off balance by his challenge outside the box and he fell over into the back of Broja's legs but I don't see how that was "careless, reckless or using excessive force",

I guess an entire Craig Dawson into the back of the leg is probably “excessive”

FlorinRaduclious

It is definitely excessive force.

However, the push outside the box was definitely a foul, so that is where is should have been pulled back to.

If Dawson handn't collided with him as they both fell down, and they instead fell down apart, the ref would definitely have pulled back as a foul for the push.

(I'm still bitter).

alderz

Personally, I think it was a pen. I’m not convinced it was a foul initially, and, even if it was, the second one is definitely a foul and the ref had allowed the game to continue, presumably for advantage.

If there’s anyone to be annoyed at it’s Diop for defending about as well as I could.

PrestonHammer

Oh, I don't know. You could bamboozle them with stats hahaha