Mikhail Chigorin wrote:Nick wrote:Mikhail Chigorin wrote:Nick wrote:Appreciate what you are all saying but what is a half full, even flatter atmosphere going to achieve??
Last night was do or die and it was flat from the start - the crap atmosphere transmits to the players (clichy example. Clichy was the one quoted as saying he needed the fans before kick off FFS).
An empty stadium sends a message out that we will not tolerate blatant bias. On the flip side, this would get reported as 'crap city fans glory hunting'.
i'm just out of ideas as to how we speak out against the bias. Vince needs to speak out. He respected throughout the world. How is there no aftermath with the ref booking a completely different player? Why can't we appeal the result?
At best the ref will disappear to some obscure league just like the paid off ref did In the Europa in the kiev match (Mario got sent off). People forget that we had even worse decisions in the Europa - yet we had a better atmosphere in a lot of those games.
This is an extreme and ridiculous idea but if we finish in the top four at the end of this season [or, especially, if we were to win the League], we ought to then refuse to enter either of the European competitions, as a form of protest.
This would cause a stir which the media couldn't ignore and distort and which even the Fat Frenchmen would find it difficult to sweep under the carpet. However, as a consequence, it would probably then cause us to be banned from European competitions 'ad infinitum' and, in any event, such a course would be very distasteful to our owners.
It would certainly be a way of protesting though.
but it won't happen as the steer from the clubs top brass is ''bend over backwards for UEFA". I thought we had lawyers building a case for this FFP bollocks? I thought the reason we didn't challenge was because we would be 'banned' from Europe for a year pending investigation and this was something that 'was not feasible to the fans/or from a financial perspective".
Well in hindsight, I'd much rather we weren't in Europe this year pending a dispute with UEFA about FFP whilst we proceeded to buy players like Barkley, Pogba, Isco, Di Maria (spit) and a striker....
Being a pessimist at the best of times (or should that be the worst of times), I don't think we'll need to worry at all about European competitions next season.
Our current form is so dispiriting that I feel we might only finish in mid-table come the end of May. We could be fighting it out with the Scum to avoid sneaking in to one of the Europa places.
In theory, this would give us the opportunity to spend big and re-build our ageing squad but, in all actuality, I don't think the money will be there and our open cheque book days, when we could go out and buy half a team, are now well behind us. It might mean that we've got to do a 'Twitcher' and start selling, buying and generally wheeler-dealing to change things.
On the other hand, maybe we would be better employed bringing in the youngsters from now on, rather than waiting any longer.
They couldn't do any worse than what's happening at the moment.
They are not ready for starting in the Premier League, but no reason some can't play in dead games or be on the bench for domestic cup games.