Did anyone else notice that throughout the second half yesterday, the Charlton players seemed to be prone to injury? It seemed that every time we made a tackle or there was a coming together a Charlton player was left lying on the ground injured. Perhaps our team tackle hard or perhaps it is a deliberate tactic to disrupt the flow of the game or waste time. I cannot believe that their manager, with his pedigree, would encourage such behaviour. Not word from the ref although he does have a difficult job in sorting out real injury from fake ones. Then there is the blatant time wasting, I know all teams do it, but their keeper seemed to be able to take as long as he liked every time he had the ball in his hands or take a goal kick. This was all perfectly alright with the referee, who also seemed to ignore any foul play from Charlton but penalise anything that we did resulting in one of their players falling over. Perhaps the outcome of all this was that we were denied a point? We will never know. What I do know is that we have very little chance of avoiding the drop now. The league table does not lie. Defensively we are clearly not good enough. There seems to be a real lack of experienced Championship quality central defenders in England although there seem to be a few defenders in Austria who have no Championship experience. It is hard to judge from one game but it seems that Sollbauer has done little to improve our defence.
Honestly we should just bring in a ball in play timer to stop this sort of stuff. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe in the 6 mins added on there was an injury that stopped the game for nearly 3 mins but yet only 97 mins was played in the end rather than 99. I understand teams doing it as they get away with it. Unless it’s us of course we seem to get treated in quite a different manner when we do it. WBA away being a prime example.
Time wasting and this kind of professionalism is killing football for me. Refs rarely do anything about it and all teams do it when leading in the second half. Complete disregard for the fans who have paid their hard earned money.
This is what the modern game is now, a soft as **** bore and cheat fest. The worst thing is, it’s all the young uns know so it’s here to stay and it bores me to tears
To be honest that's not quite correct. We somehow managed to put together wave after wave of attacks towards the end, Charlton were tired and panicky at times. We were playing well but ran out of time.
I (and others) said it time and time again, we need an appointed timekeeper who times the ball in play. Let the ref concentrate on reffing.
The ref literally turned his back time after time. Their Goalkeeper couldn’t believe his luck. Enabled him to waste a good 20 seconds more as the ref just wasn’t watching.
All correct about the Charlton "injuries" and the time-wasting by the goalkeeper, disregarded by the ref, who was weak throughout. And unlikely as it may seem, based on the two games so far, Portsmouth & Charlton, I rate Andersen some way ahead of Solbauer.
I think a ball in play timer is an excellent idea, so the likelihood of FIFA or UEFA introducing such a thing is virtually zero. I seem to remember back in the last century that in one World Cup the amount of time the ball was in play was given at half time and full time. Generally this was less than 60 minutes. No wonder the authorities have not debated it since, to my knowledge. Taking the time keeping away from the referee would be a brilliant innovation. He/she has more than enough to do.
