Five things that have annoyed me about football this week

Hello everyone and welcome to another five things that have annoyed me about football this week!

This week saw Liverpool extend their lead at the top of the Premier League with a victory over Manchester City and Arsenal lost again…

But let’s get right into it!

Number 1- Liverpool Fans

Personally I think Liverpool were quite fortunate to beat Man City on Sunday, Bravo had a shocker and the first goal was debatable.

But you need luck in football so this doesn’t annoy me, what did annoy me was the controversy surrounding the first goal.

Basically what happened is Man City were attacking and ball ricocheted onto the hand of Trent Alexander Arnold. Liverpool then went up the other end and scored.

There has been much debate as to what action should have been taken, but it was just given as a goal for Liverpool.

Personally I think it was handball but it hit Bernardo Silva’s hand first, this however doesn’t mean that play should just continue. If Bernardo Silva’s handball was an offence then Liverpool’s advantage should have stopped when it hit Alexander-Arnold’s hand.

Anyway the reason why Liverpool fans annoyed me is that I have seen a lot of them saying things like ” we had a perfectly good goal ruled out against Aston Villa but no one is talking about that because we are Liverpool”.

This argument gets on my nerves for two reasons:

• Of course no one is talking about it, Liverpool won the game anyway and I doubt the majority of people watching Liverpool v Man City were watching Aston Villa v Liverpool (a game that was a 3pm KO on a Saturday)
• Also just because you’ve had a bad decision against you, doesn’t mean that people can’t complain when you get a fortunate one

I am in no way trying to tarnish all Liverpool fans with the same brush but I just found this justification odd. You got fortunate, just admit it, don’t go on acting like the victim because you think people are picking on you.

Number 2- Borussia Dortmund

Over to German football now, and you may be wondering what Borussia Dortmund have done to annoy me…

They lost.

I am so bored of the Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 just being won by the same teams every year.

Bayern Munich have started way off their best in the Bundesliga this season, and this led to Nico Kovac leaving his post after a 5-1 drubbing at the hands of Eintracht Frankfurt.

So surely this would be the year where Dortmund finally overtake their rivals and win their first Bundesliga crown since Jurgen Klopp left the Westfalenstadion.

It doesn’t look like it, Bayern beat them 4-0 on the weekend, showing that they will probably just go on and win the league again.

Boring.

Hopefully Leipzig or Monchengladbach will be the ones to stop them, but I doubt it.

Number 3- Arsene Wenger

This week Arsene Wenger made his return to football as Fifa’s chief of global football development.

This annoys me because I really wanted him to return to management.

He was heavily linked with the Bayern Munich job and this is something that I would have loved to have seen, I really feel after a couple of years off he will be reinvigorated as a coach, but we won’t know anytime soon.

I’d even take him back at Arsenal to be fair.

But yes this just annoyed me because I really wanted to see him take on a challenge at another club and prove his status as one of the best coaches out there.

Many might say that he is old and outdated as a manager but I strongly believe that he had just become a bit stale at Arsenal and a new challenge would take him back to the top.

Number 4- The FA

Apologies as this blog is now going to take a serious turn but this week the FA announced the punishment that would be handed to Bernardo Silva after his racist tweet to teammate Benjamin Mendy.

The FA have fined him £50,000 and have banned him for one match.

This is a very complex and delicate issue that I want to address carefully but I’m not sure this punishment by the FA is right.

Now, when Silva first made this tweet I didn’t think it was racist. I don’t want to seem ignorant but I just thought he was comparing Mendy to a cartoon, that happened to look like him.

I took issue with a lot of people coming out and saying “this is racist” but not actually saying why, I watched a whole ten minute video where it was being discussed and not once was an actual explanation given as to what differentiates this issue to comparing Wayne Rooney to Shrek for example.

However a few weeks later I listened to an excellent podcast (The games gone mad) and the reasoning as to why it was racist was very eloquently put forward.

I won’t go into that now but finally someone had actually explained why this was racist.

I don’t think Silva should be banned for this incident as I believe this is separate to the issue of racism in the English game.

Yes, it is racist but it was clearly a mistake and just a bit of ignorance. The backlash he received from it should act as a deterrent and a fine is okay because he earns about triple that per week.

But a ban is a bit far in my opinion.

Number 5- VAR

I feel like the end of VAR is just around the corner, which I find such a shame but our referees just can’t hack it.

It isn’t being implemented correctly at all, let’s look at two incident’s from the weekend as an example.

Sheffield United had a goal chalked off for offside, I am normally an advocate of VAR being used for offside because it is black and white, or offside or onside.

But I really couldn’t see how Lundstram was offside and there is some debate as to whether this phase of play should even have been looked at by VAR.

Secondly I think the incident in the Liverpool game on Sunday shows how it isn’t being implemented correctly at all.

The referee should have gone over to the pitch side monitor to look at the handball because this would have given him a better idea of what went on.

This was a perfect example of a time where this should have been used but no. It was difficult to see what went on in Liverpool’s box at that moment but it was almost as if the referees ignored it because both players committed an offence, which isn’t right.

They seem to be reluctant to implement VAR in the same way we have seen in the World Cup and Champions League, where to be fair there has been very little controversy.

It needs sorting out.

That’s all for this week!

Thanks for reading and what did you think of this list, do you agree?