English Football Season 2025-2026. Here we go again.

Markets have moved arsenal to slight title favorites and market implied power rankings have arsenal as the best team in the league now.

sUpErB wIn AgAiNsT tHe OdDs

less than 50% implied odds to win, CONFIRMED WIN AGAINST THE ODDS

I have no idea why this is allowed.

It seems like Im in the minority here that thought the ref did fine yesterday?

Ive also read that he’s not allowed to ref Everton’s games either, though apparently reffing ManU games is ok even though they are far more hated by Liverpool fans.

It’s a complete mess, which is standard for the PGMOL, and they need to get foreign refs in to replace these incompetent and biased refs.

He’s now officiated in 66% of Arsenals league games this season.

btw, as someone who watches a lot English, Spanish and Dutch football I think you have the best referees & var out of the 3
Not that they are good, but here in Holland and in Spain its even more terrible.

Maybe you can naturalise Marciniak :p

For me Italy seems to be the gold standard for VARing stuff, but I might have just been lucky in those few occasions that I've watched.

I'm surprised its worse in Spain though.

This won't fly in Farage country, unless they are Irish

But here you are complaining about the Premier League's first foreign ref 🙄

Who has been the main referee for 2 Arsenal games this season and they've won them both.

Stop being results oriented.

This might be the greatest X account of all time

https://x.com/TheHateCentral

Then again, it might be complete toss

Sunderland fans already appreciating Xhaka as one of the best players ever. They might even stay up?

I’ve been complaining about all of them for years. Surely no one outside fans of the small number of clubs they favour season after season is happy with them?

lol

Sounds funny but when you consider how pilots have to express maximum information with minimum words it’s a decent idea imo.

Also these things tend to be as much about bonding as getting direct value from them.

Fans of every club think the refs are against them. Not every fan, but as a group.

my first-off-the-bench scores in FPL this season

6, 6, 14, 6, 15, 17

0______________________0

reinildo vDv senesi reinildo stach and alderete for those keeping score at home

have already seen sunderland lifers say hes the best to ever put on their shirt

The ref did mostly ok, the issue is with PGMOL and VAR.

For starters, nowhere does it say that if you play the ball it's automatically not a foul. When Saliba conceded a penalty vs Brighton last season he also got to the ball first, and the penalty was still given. Pope took out Gyokeres and prevented him from getting to the ball, that's a foul. At the very least I think we can agree that if a penalty was given for that, it would not have been unreasonable at all.

Secondly, and this is my main issue. The referee (a noted Liverpool supporter) called it a penalty on the field because it looked pretty stonewall in real time. So what the hell was VAR doing? The purpose of VAR is to overturn CLEAR AND OBVIOUS mistakes from the referee. Was that what happened yesterday? If you have to look at the slow-mo 15 times to determine if Pope got a tiny touch on the ball in the first place, it was not a clear and obvious error that warrants a VAR overturn. In baseball for example, whenever a decision is too close to call, the original call on the field stands.

That's VAR overstepping its intended purpose. It feels like a clear agenda from PGMOL to find any excuse to rule against Arsenal. And this stuff is wildly inconsistent and has mostly gone against Arsenal in the past 3 seasons. Remember Trossard getting a second yellow at Man City for "kicking the ball away" 0.5 seconds after the whistle? I can find numerous examples of far more blatant and intentional time wasting not getting carded last season.

Stonewall in real time =/= a penalty if the slow mo shows it isn't one though.

Romero was sent off vs Chelsea last year for going through the ball dangerously into a Chelsea player - obv red and whatever.

Here it's effectively a tackle not a missed one.

VAR is a nightmare and a completely predictable one. Pure AIDS waiting to see if a goal is actually a goal for 5 minutes.

There’s no rhyme or reason as to why or when they overturn something. The refs somehow still can’t decide wtf a handball is. Both the gabriel handball and the Gyokeres/GK incident could have gone either way. What’s the point in slowing it down and analyzing the **** out of it if it’s still just a flip of a coin which way it goes?

Why didn't they find an excuse to give the penalty to Newcastle on Sunday?

Slow motion showed the ball had diverted off Gabriel’s body onto his arm.