They call me Shrugs

The upcoming world Cup will be unwatchable if European trophies and recent friendlies are anything to go by, players throwing themselves around feigning injury and referees falling for it all the time absolutely kill any joy in the game.

@RachelReevesMP What a time to own a vape shop, tattoo parlour or off license those tills will be buzzing. I bet sales of healthy food doesn't even blip.

Today we are lifting 450,000 children out of poverty with the end of the two-child limit.  This Labour Government is achieving the biggest reduction in child poverty over a Parliament since records began.  Change promised. Change delivered.

They love a dive in Hull, like watching a South American side without the talent. #HULvsCOV

This ref should be sacked, absolute joker Ozoh 10 fouls no card, penalty not given for a push on Sakamoto, penalty given for a great save and now a missed red card. Hopeless absolutely out of his depth #COVDER

@fandompulse I stumbled across Marshalls, they've taken girlboss to a whole new level of shitness and gone full snarkygirlboss it's completely unwatchable and I think may have been penned by ChatGPT with the prompt write a yellowstone spinoff with sass.

Chuck Dixon on why The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is so bad: "What Amazon is doing to Tolkien is an abomination. The people doing the work obviously don’t understand the original work. They are adding elements that are very 2022 to it that five years from now are going to appear laughable. They’re taking a timeless tale and setting it basically in our contemporary zeitgeist. And it’s just wrong." How right is he?

@BillboardChris Hard to believe people are getting into adult life and still behaving like children. Seriously it's a child's temper tantrum, parents probably made a million threats never carried out a single punishment and these adult children never learn boundaries. Mad.

Trans-identified female lawyer berates judge, pulls trans card, gets found in contempt, resists arrest, screams “I can’t breathe,” and yells for people to call 911 as she’s fighting police. Absolutely glorious performance. Women should not take testosterone.

Nobody softballs Starmer than @BethRigby she's like his PR girl it is pathetic

Gary Neville talking out of his arse again, a keeping mistake and a good goal and he's saying the back 4 have been poor. He's such a clueless prick #ARSMCI

Arteta watching this and thinking Havertz is a player? Or Trossard running around watching the ball in the air #ARSMCI

1 0 to the cheating c#nts how wonderful, reward for all their hard work circumventing the rules. #ARSMCI

Needs to take Havertz off he's shite #ARSMCI

Some proper play acting there to get a player booked, there's nothing cheating Pep won't resit to for a result. #ARSvsMCI

@jhansonradio Maybe the UK wants comedy that is funny not student u ion wankers and their purile nonsense.

Why are so many people seemingly rooting for #snluk to fail? Yes, it’s an American import, and tbh the US version of Saturday Night Live isn’t often that funny… BUT, why WOULDN’T you want a new comedy show that gives a massive platform to new, young British talent to succeed?!

@SwedishRumble @FA_PGMOL What absolute bollocks, it's the lesser teams that stop the game with tactical fouls the better teams want the game to be continuous where defending players tire and gaps appear.

The big problem @FA_PGMOL has is how today the modus of every defender in the PL when dribbled past — is to pull down the attacking player. It doesn’t matter if you are in the penalty area or if the attacker is in alone on goal. In other words — the “tactical foul” — is committed even in situations where you give up a penalty and/or a red card. Why are defenders doing this? Teams and players acts in a way that pays offs. Commit 5 fouls like this, and you give up 1-2 penalties and red cards — and you probably prevent 2-3 goals. And it is clearly the reason for why the PL in 25/26 only is about set pieces and there is a record number of 0-0 games. This evolution has been driven by Arteta and Pep who have teams that are extremely smart with the tactical fouls. They are disciplined and don’t commit fouls when their defense breaks down — but every time someone breaches their defense by beating a player 1 on 1 — it’s stopped with a foul. Since they get away with it everyone else is starting to follow suit. And the Mings, Tarkowskis and Maguires of the league is having a renaissance. A Amad Diallo skips past defenders 6-7 times per game. 6-7 times per game, he is hauled to the ground by the defender. And he draws on average 0.7 fouls per game. UEFA’s official twitter channel asked this week — if you could make a team of XI with only one player, who would it be? I think Valverde was most commonly mentioned. But seriously — in the PL, in the way it’s reffed by PGMOL — a team with 10 Dan Burns would be unplayable, right?

@AdamJoseph @BeanymanSports @ManUtd @PLMatchCentre The amount of generous refereeing they've had in the last month or so but you think you're the victim, when did you become Liverpool?

Michael Carrick goes in on the officiating & VAR: “It's clear [Stuart Attwell]'s definitely got one of them wrong because he's given one penalty for us for the same thing that he's not given. There's a two arm grab. So Maguire's one he gives the second one on, Amad's he doesn't. Which is, I think it's almost identical really, if you two hands on someone in a box and they go over and they're in control of the ball. For me it's two penalties, but be interesting to see which one they acknowledge is wrong, whether the one we got or the one that we didn't get. And it's a huge moment and you don't give it. They go down the other end and score and then becomes all of a sudden, oh, it needs to be a bigger penalty penalty to overturn just because they scored, when actually it's a penalty and it should be a penalty if you already give one. So a bit baffling really to make sense of that. And because they score, then the game flips a little bit and changes. And then we ended up, I thought we defended with the 10 men after all that very well. And the boys coming off the bench and finishing the game really strong. So that was a big positive for us to take the point in the end because we've seen them win late here and so we take that. But the penalty one is just astonishing. I have to say, one of them must be wrong.. Once it's done, it's done. You know, I think you can have all, all the conversations in the world about could it have been this, could it have been that? I just think, you know, surely if they've already just given everyone and agree that was a penalty, surely the next one should be a straightforward one. As I say, one of them's got to be right or the wrong or whatever, do you know what I mean? But after it, it's no point [apologising] whatever comes. Whether they apologise or don't, it's done now.” [@BeanymanSports]

@TheAthleticFC Remember when Gary Neville hailed his genius for defending a 1 0 defect in the second leg, sitting 11 men behind the ball hoping to nick something at the end. GN praised him like the second coming of JC, reality bites hard

First there were the three PSG goals in the final 14 minutes of the first leg. Then Pedro Neto pushed a ball boy. Then there was that huddle, a loss to Newcastle United and the need to "respect the ball". There followed a suspended transfer ban and a fine for breaching transfer rules. Captain Reece James was then ruled out for several weeks with a hamstring injury. His replacement, Malo Gusto, was too ill to face PSG. Then the team selection leaked in the French media. Fans booed the players, the substitutions and walked out with half an hour left of the second leg, a result which confirmed the joint-heaviest defeat in the club's history. Oh and then James' replacement as captain, Enzo Fernandez, dropped a large hint that he is considering his future. Welcome to Chelsea, Liam Rosenior. 📝 @SJohnsonSport 🔗 bit.ly/4snc2Va

@thesnlnetwork Christ how awful, it's like a student union production where everyone gets a role because mummy and daddy paid for lessons and couldn't bring themselves to tell them they are shit.

SNL UK Promo with Tina Fey 🇬🇧 Live on Sky and streaming service NOW every Saturday from 21 March, or catch-up on demand!

@AhmetAhmet95020 Dreadful to watch, it's just plain cheating

@Cooksley Öyle zaten. Galatasaray ligde de aynı böyle oynuyor. Oyunu durdurmaktan oynayamıyoruz.

Turkish football must be completely unwatchable if this Galatasaray performance is anything to go by. Grown men rolling around crying like children at the slightest touch #LIVvsGAL

@PeterMcCormack I think you miss the point that the poor did this not the good teams, they packed defences, relied on set pieces, defensive solidity kept you in games, set pieces won them. So the better teams realised they needed set pieces too because every game was a slog against a low block

The Premier League is boring. Arsenal, City and now Liverpool have ruined it, essentially they have F1’d the game. The data tells them to horseshoe the box, don’t take risks, play percentages and win set pieces. There are no personalities anymore. All boring athletes. The Championship is far more entertaining. I’m all for the European Super League, let them have it and the Prem can go back to being affordable and exciting.