Steven Gerrard

[chancer]

I hope this won't seem like sour grapes over yesterday but after reading all the papers about the game it seems steven gerrard is being hailed as the greatest player again:yikes:. I despise him as a player;fire As an athlete he is first class but his constant diving is unreal. If you watch the penalty yesterday in slow motion, he was going down before the contact was made. Am i the only one who sees this? Other players ( ronaldo, drogba, robben etc) are fond of falling over with minimum contact but gerrard is the most blatent cheat of them all.:headbange:ermmm ( maybe this should be in the rant section:doh)

[mathare]

Am i the only one who sees this?I said something along the same lines the other day when he "made the most of a challenge" from a Real Madrid player.

[MattR]

I agree that Gerrard is up there with Ronaldo for diving for penalties and never gets criticised by the press over anything he does. It was a penalty yesterday but like most premier players these days he knocked the ball ahead and left his leg there to be hit (which lets be fair Park did to an extent as well)

The other week when he kicked the ball into the Chelsea player (forget who now) exactly the same as had happened the previous day on Wright Phillips that was dealt with by a red card. A few minutes later he dived in shin high on a tackle that was completey overlooked only for Lampard to be sent off for a tackle that took the ball a couple of minutes later.

I also remember a penalty from last season when there was a corner and he was talking to the ref making a big point that the defender was holding him and then as soon as the defender touched him as the corner went over, down he went.

I do think he's a good player but I don't particularly think he was that special yesterday. The goals were down to awful defending for the most part (what was Vidic on yesterday?)

[MattR]

I said something along the same lines the other day when he "made the most of a challenge" from a Real Madrid player.


That's the sort of comment that really annoys me with commentators and Gerrard. Was it the Chelsea game he got booked for diving, I think it was. Andy Gray said something like "he made a bit more of that" No he didn't, he dived.

[mathare]

what was Vidic on yesterday?Liverpool's payroll?

[peza2605]

aside from the diving part of him ,if i see that bit where he kisses the camera yesterday again i will have to buy a new tv.

[TheOldhamWhisper]

I hope this won't seem like sour grapes over yesterday ...

Maybe not over yesterday but it does sound very much like the comments I am used to hearing from the ManU fans directed at the Liverpool fans I work with. Amazingly, the Liverpool fans always seem to point out the number of times that Park, Ronaldo et al 'fall over' whenever they see a penalty area too.

I find that several of the better players in the Premiership know how to 'win' penalties (whether by fair means is open to debate) by ensuring that they run at defenders and shift their body weight so that the slightest touch is going to bring them down. Is this cheating? According to the laws of the game, the defender is the one at fault (or the ones that actually make contact anyway!)

Maybe the game needs a few 'Vinnie Jones' - at least there was no doubt about if he hit you...cos when he did, you stayed hit!

[mathare]

With the speed of some players these days they are running at the edge of their balance and anticipating a challenge that doesn't hit them (or at least not as hard as they expected) can see them go to ground easily but they are not diving. As Oldham says there are quite a few players now who play to draw the foul and know how to win one from defenders. This means the game isn't the same as it was when the laws of the game were drawn up so perhaps they need to be revised. Football is a contact sport so I'm not advocating that every little nudge and bump be penalised, nor am I saying that defenders should be able to hack down the opposition but the FA/FIFA and referees need to look at challenges in light of how the player was moving before the challenge and how much contact was actually made. Unfortunately referees are older than players and not as fit or fast so they may not understand what it means to be moving at the speed of some of the Premiership footballers when they are clipped by a defender.

[Win2Win]

Liverpool's payroll?
:laugh

I'd say 50% of all penalties/fouls given are of limited contact. As Mat says, it is just part of the game now imported from mainland Europe.

It is only really an annoying issue when the game is won by one goal, in games like yesterday's, as Peza said, ManU were just outplayed, and never turned up.

Be intersting to see the stats on how many pens a player/team has received.