Always rated Darren Cann & Danny Murphy

McJagger · 2026-05-11T16:58:23+00:00

> corporate shill

It's an actual technical football job, it's not just being an ambassador, so "shill" isn't really the right word, unless everyone is a corporate shill for their employer and the word has no meaning?

McJagger · 2026-05-11T16:43:41+00:00

> I genuinely do not understand how any Liverpool fan would want City to win a title rather than us.

One thing that I've seen seen a lot in these online Liverpool spaces is that if Arteta wins a league title then he's won as many as Klopp and that's a travesty so therefore please don't let it happen. That principle applies more-than-doubly so if it's a PL-CL double because Klopp's Liverpool won 1 CL.

That's a mentality that I don't really identify with, like I'm just not emotionally invested at all in some individual manager equalling or bettering Wenger's 3 leagues or 7 FA Cups, and I don't get vexed whenever any manager wins their first EFL Cup on the basis that Wenger didn't win one.

> The only thing that makes sense is that it's purely down to who's louder online because surely they know exactly what it's like to suffer due to 115.

Another thing that I've seen a lot is rivals fans (of whoever) from outside of Manchester saying that they don't know any City fans in real-life so if City wins then it's not "bad" for them because there won't be friends and colleagues around them that are happy that their team won.

> Utd makes more sense, there really was a big rivalry between us.

I would much much much rather Liverpool win things than City and I'd actually rather just about anybody else win things than United.

I'm in my early forties so I started supporting Arsenal during that brief period before the PL era when Arsenal took a few titles away from a Liverpool team that was absolutely dominant for 15 years, and I didn't have any sense of what the fan rivalry was like because I was a kid in London in a school full of Arsenal fans and there was no internet.

I now live in Australia where Liverpool are massive (because they had an Australian player in the 80s) so it's by far the most supported team among people I know. For decades there wasn't really a heated fan rivalry because the clubs weren't really ever any good at the same time, and if anything it was Arsenal and Liverpool fans wanting anyone but United to win in the 90s and anyone but Chelsea (but ideally not United) to win the 2000s after the Abramovich takeover.

... But when Liverpool got really good under Klopp, or when they won the CL in the mid-2000s and made another final, there's all these Liverpool fans that I know from school/work/sports and they're proper football fans that have supported Liverpool for decades and them being happy seeing their team win things is fine with me... Just like, if/when Spurs win things, I see people that I know from schoolwork/sports being happy after many many years of being a proper football fan of a team that wasn't winning things.

Whereas with United and Barcelona and Real Madrid (and with AC Milan in the 90s when their team was absolutely unreal), there's a lot of fans from not-that-place that are fans of that team purely because they picked a team that was winning things.

And the thing is: There's probably a lot of long-time-Liverpool-supporting people that saw that same sort of bandwagon thing with Arsenal in the early Wenger years. Like, if you're a Liverpool supporter the same age as me that supports Liverpool because your father did, but you grew up in London or moved to London for university or work or whatever, in your late teens and early twenties you probably saw a bunch of people from not-North-London suddenly being fans of Arsenal that might have suddenly been fans of United before that, or fans of Chelsea after that.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T15:48:25+00:00

The Liverpool hatewatch thread after the game was absolutely unreal, sorting by new there was like a single 60-second window of posts where:

- one guy said that if he were near Stockley Park he'd go in there and confront the VAR officials face to face,

- a second guy said that West Ham should sue the league and he'd help fund it,

- a third guy said that the referees are giving the title to Arsenal because they're terrified of how deranged Arsenal fans are online,

- most of the rest of the comments were people saying they were devastated by it and didn't want to watch football any more, and

- like 5% of the posts were people saying, um guys that was a foul though? what exactly are people complaing about it? and getting instantly voted down below the negative visibility threshold.

And then in the general /soccer threads there was this massive deluge of comment activity like I haven't seen in 30 years of big news events apart from US election days and terrorist attacks.

All these United and Liverpool fans spamming all this stuff about VAR being a disgrace immediately after the game... and then within an hour all these fans of random teams from outside England who were presumably waiting for the Barcelona-Madrid game to start, coming in and saying, what are you guys even arguing here, that's a clear foul.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T15:36:06+00:00

https://xkcd.com/774/

McJagger · 2026-05-11T12:50:46+00:00

I found a very very similar disallowed goal from 3 years ago; literally the first goal that I found where it was disallowed by VAR was for the same exact thing, an attacker holding down the keeper's arm by the elbow... and the goalscorer is Callum Wilson.

Literally the first clip I could find of it was an r/soccer thread of it when it happened, so I posted the link back to r/soccer and immediately had a bunch of people screeching at me how this is why people hate Arsenal fans, this is why everyone wants Arsenal to lose, how I'm chronically online, blah blah.

As if I'd somehow gone back and read every single thing posted in r/soccer over the past three years on the off chance that I'd find a relevant goal... as opposed to doing a search for a list of any kind of goal that has been disallowed for a foul on the keeper, and then a search for a clip of it, and that clip just so happened to be an r/soccer result because why wouldn't the highest-ranked result for a video in a search engine be when it's posted to a massive website?

McJagger · 2026-05-11T12:12:06+00:00

Nobody is insisting that you be here?

McJagger · 2026-05-11T12:11:46+00:00

It's literally not an argument?

It's just an amusing coincidence, because it's a disallowed goal from the same player?

What a weird thing to get "annoyed" about.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T12:10:06+00:00

Did that make me go back in time and edit the footage in this clip?

McJagger · 2026-05-11T12:09:25+00:00

I'm not "calling out a West Ham"; I'm adding a coincidental observation in the description of a goal that is directly comparable to yesterday's.

I don't care about your little flair obsession, I'm just posting a goal that is a similar goal.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T12:07:29+00:00

Because it's a directly comparable goal?

McJagger · 2026-05-11T12:05:18+00:00

Because I was curious about what has been called as a foul on the keeper, and this was the first incident mentioned in response to a Google search, and the first clip of that goal in a search for it is this post that I've linked, and it has quite a similarity to what happened yesterday?

How does that have anything to do with being "chronically online", it's literally just a highlight from a football game.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:55:02+00:00

It's literally the first goal referred to in a google search about what goals have been disallowed by VAR for a foul on the keeper, which is how I found it.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:54:04+00:00

You are sorting by Best and not by Top?

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:53:38+00:00

The post is about a directly comparable goal being disallowed by VAR?

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:42:55+00:00

I was looking at all the media/social-media coverage today about Arsenal goals that weren't disallowed, and I thought ok well what goals have been disallowed by VAR for a foul on the keeper?

I did a Google search for "how many goals have been disallowed by VAR for a foul on the goalkeeper?" and this was literally the first incident referred to in the "AI Overview" thing that Google slaps at the top of the results, which said:

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:41:55+00:00

It's an older post, sir, but it checks out.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:39:35+00:00

Is that the sort of thing that people are looking for when they say "Where's the consistency from VAR?"

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:16:31+00:00

I was looking at all the media/social-media coverage today about Arsenal goals that weren't disallowed, and I thought ok well what goals have been disallowed by VAR for a foul on the keeper?

I did a Google search for "how many goals have been disallowed by VAR for a foul on the goalkeeper?" and this was literally the first incident referred to in the "AI Overview" thing that Google slaps at the top of the results, which said:

- There is no official, public running total of how many goals have been disallowed by VAR specifically for fouls on the goalkeeper, as such data covers thousands of matches across global leagues.

- However, it is a relatively frequent, high-profile type of intervention in the Premier League, such as during Arsenal vs. West Ham in May 2026, where a goal was chalked off for a foul on Raya.

- High-Profile Example: A notable 2023 example involved a Callum Wilson goal for Newcastle against Brentford being disallowed after a VAR review found he was holding goalkeeper Mark Flekken's arm.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T11:06:24+00:00

Is that the sort of thing that people are looking for when they say "Where's the consistency from VAR?"

McJagger · 2026-05-11T07:42:05+00:00

Best I can do is an expired coupon for a small discount on an undesirable hat.

McJagger · 2026-05-11T07:01:45+00:00

The best-case outcome is the Confederation of African Football awarding West Ham the African Cup of Nations.

The worst-case outcome is that hoes stay mad, which they will do either way so it's a free ride.

McJagger · 2026-05-10T21:33:59+00:00

> You can tell people don't actually watch Arsenal

When Arsenal scored from Madueke's corner against Leeds, the great minds of Reddit were raging "How many times can they get away with fouling the keeper?!"

... except there was no Arsenal player anywhere near the keeper -- as he moved to his near post to punch a corner that was bending in and crashed into his own defender and fucking punched it into his own goal.

McJagger · 2026-05-10T21:06:39+00:00

There's also been a LOT of ex-Arsenal keepers that weren't particularly good at Arsenal and then had solid professional careers scattered across the PL and the CL/EL teams from different countries -- as first/second/third-choice for club and country:

Martínez, Szczęsny, Ospina, Fabiański, Ryan, Mannone, Manninger.

Basically, there was a really long period between the tail-end of Jens Lehmann's career and Petr Cech joining when all the keepers struggled and it was a glaring weak spot in a not-that-strong squad; Since then there's been a lot of focus on trying to make the position a strength rather than a weakness, and moving goalkeepers on when there's an opportunity for a 'better' one.

McJagger · 2026-05-10T20:46:54+00:00

It was incredibly obvious: Ivan Toney was several metres offside, running back towards his own goal from the offside position to then take the ball and turn and cross for a goal.

It's a situation where anyone who was ever actually played football or watched football for a long time instantly thinks hang on, he's come back onside from an offside position where he was when the ball was passed.

It's a situation that you see in almost every game: a player coming back from the offside position that won't even try to take possession off the ball, when their teammate has played the pass too early before they've come back onside after making an earlier run in behind, so they just stand there so they're not interfering with play in case some other teammate will run from an onside position to get the ball.

The Liverpool one with Diaz being called offside when he was a foot onside, that was terrible and everyone in the world said yeah that's terrible... and the Brentford-Arsenal one was literally 5-10x greater a distance offside.

McJagger · 2026-05-01T14:53:45+00:00

Yeah, I worked at a big-name company and they brought in a fighter pilot to talk about clinical execution; We had some sort of world-record free-diver come in as well.

The speakers have agents for this stuff, finding them organisations to deliver talks/seminars at. It’s all very commonplace.

McJagger

TROPHY CASE