I hate diving. Professional cheating. I have no doubt it’s coached into players, because full backs at every single club do it in every game. The old ‘get themself inbetween the attacker and the ball, stop, let the attacker run into them and fall down’ trick. They all do it, all the time. I really wish a linesman would have the balls not to flag for a foul, cos 95% of them are not fouls (occasionally the attacker will give the defender a kick or a clout). Diving, along with the money side of the game, are the reasons I fell out of love with football. I especially get depressed when I hear the ‘experts’ come out with the ‘there was contact’ nonsense. Watching players doing the Jamie Vardy trick of sticking a leg out to instigate contact, before falling over, is not watching a player ‘using his experience’ or ‘being clever’, it’s cheating, and I hate it. And Barnsley are getting to be the worst at it. And, watching Jalo’s pathetic dive, THE worst. Jalo has a bright future ahead of him. For his sake someone needs to knock it out of him. The dive today was almost worthy of a straight red. The worst dive since that one of Willie Ferry’s, which held the game up momentarily, until the players and officials had stopped laughing. But seriously, Cosgrove, MDG, Cotter, Jalo, etc, really need to cut it out. It’s bad enough watching them being rubbish at playing football. Watching them being rubbish at cheating as well is too much. Have some pride lads, eh?
I do agree, though it was a very minor detail today. Every player does it. Much more experienced than Jalo, mate. It's pathetic. "he's entitled to go down there", "slight contact", "clever play" all so incredibly annoying hearing it from commentators. But whilst referees keep giving the majority of them, unless they're ridiculously obvious like Jalos, they'll keep doing it because it's rewarding to them & the team. Slight note too, I actually don't think Cosgrove does it usually, it's when he's been kicked, pushed and shoved the **** out of with little help from the referee when he takes the occasional dive.
I hate diving...but Cosgrove doesn't dive, he falls over in round 3 of a wrestling match he has instigated....rather than trying to play football.
Oh come on. He's always been hassled beyond what other players get done to them and rewarded with free kicks. Forget which Wycombe centre half it was who climbed all over him to head the ball away, causing Cosgrove to basically be at a 90 degree angle and somehow the freekick was awarded to the defender.
He should have had a penalty against Wycombe, when one of their players tried removing his shirt at the back post from a corner. But he does go down easily most times. He might just be the most frustrating player I’ve seen in a Reds shirt. And I’m going back to 1977. He came after getting into double figures with Plymouth. Okay, they were a better team than us and won the league, and also you have to accept that some players just click at certain clubs, with certain coaches, certain teammates, certain formations/styles, but even if he was playing up front with Brazil 1970 he still had to stick them away. All last season he was hopeless in front of goal and only finally scored when the Wycombe goalkeeper lay down and gave him the ball 6 yards out. Even then, I reckon you’d have still got decent odds on him actually scoring. And yet he scored double figures in the same division the season before. And then it clicked. Two games against a very good Bolton team in the play offs and he was on fire. Winning headers, bullying their defence, holding the ball up, getting on the end of crosses, scoring goals. We were busy making plans this summer about who to play with him, now that he had turned into the perfect target man. But over the summer someone must have done a factory reset on him and restored him to how he was at the beginning of last season. Hapless just doesn’t do him justice. “He was only good when Disco was Head Coach”, I’ve heard people say. Well, guess what, Disco’s still here!! Any chance of passing the secret on to your boss Martin???
I had the very same discussion at the match I was at yesterday shoulder to shoulder there’s no foul yet when a defender stops and the opposition barely touches them over they go and it’s a foul every time. Dont even get me started on defenders obstructing the opposition to let a ball go out for a goal kick!
[QUOTE="pompey_red, Dont even get me started on defenders obstructing the opposition to let a ball go out for a goal kick![/QUOTE] its got bloody ridiculous now hasn’t it, apparently you can body check anybody as long as you’re not facing them!
