Rich Meyrick

Ok, fab. Just been beaten up a lot on it. I hate that the Maguire one is a foul because IMO it should not be…the laws should be different. But what Maguire did with his arm is what makes it a foul. 2 classes of foul result in direct free kicks (which are pens in the area) 1 class requires a determination on whether the action was careless, reckless or with excessive force. The other class does not require any such determination. The relevant infringement in this case is part of the second class and is called “impeding with contact”. You can see more in the attached for the definition. It is something called an action based law rather than an outcome based law. Similar to when a player does a 2 footed off the floor dangerous tackle but misses the player altogether. No bad outcome occurs. But it is still a sending off. The infringement is the action and not the outcome. Same for impeding with contact. It’s all about the intent of the action. By Maguire raising his arm to bring it across Havertz chest, it becomes impeding and so long as there is any contact, it is a foul that results in a DFK. Like I said, I would change this law personally and make it all outcome based. i.e., did it result in Havertz to change x, y, z. The other absolutely key bit to the impeding laws (there is one when there is contact and one where there is not) is that the ball must not be playable by either player. It has to be sufficiently far away from them both. That’s why shielding is not impeding for example (and why they wrote the law that way). With Hojlund and Gabriel, impeding is not possible because of the proximity of the ball. Also, impeding is pretty much never given unless a player steps across with their body face on to the opponent. So… what foul could it be? Gabriel’s one hand across Hojlund’s chest is insufficient to count as holding because it would be insufficient to hold him in situ. Where else could there be a foul there? The push. There is hip to hip contact. With an action such as a push, the ref has to judge whether it is careless, reckless or with excessive force. If I were officiating I would say no because I think Hojlund leans away from the challenge too much to try and reach the ball, putting himself off balance more than the challenge. But… equally… I would not have an issue with a ref judging that as careless and awarding a penalty. That judgement is subjective and really could go either way. Quite literally in the ref’s head he or she would be asking the question, “has Gabriel been careless or was Hojlund too soft there?” That question does not apply to what Maguire did because it’s a different class of infringement.

For all of you who don’t understand why this is a penalty and have wrongly lost their shit with Madley… It’s called impeding with contact. Does Maguire raise his arm to block Havertz’ path? Yes. Was Maguire trying to play the ball? No. Does his arm make contact with Havertz? Yes. That makes it ‘impeding with contact’. A DFK foul in the area, making it a penalty. It’s a category of foul where any contact makes it a foul regardless of the force applied or whether it was careless or not. Is it ‘soft’? You bet. Does Havertz go down easily to make the ref give the call? Yes. Is it a penalty? Still yes. Maguire was an idiot for raising his arm like that to try and block Havertz off. Don’t like the laws? Don’t blame you. I don’t like that one much as written either. But at least learn them first.

There’s a team in that draw that has a seating capacity of 500.

Who are the best actors ever at taking some dialogue that is just nonsense but delivering it with such gravitas that it sounds cool as hell? Anthony Hopkins, right? Who else?

What TV show had a perfect pilot? I’ll start: