Chelsea 1.8 at home to soton on Saturday. Around 1.5 last year iirc.

Dream summer 2.0 though

To be honest, So'ton look like free money. Chelsea have been fine in attack but a ****-show in defense. So'ton are near the top in chances created and have conceded the fewest shots inside the box of all teams.

Speaking of So'ton, is Jordy Clasie back? And what sort of role would he play in this team?

Chelsea are gonna click into gear eventually. Squad/team is too good not too.

The Portuguese David Moyes tho

regarding replays, if we have to wait like 30-60 seconds to actually get a correct call in a critical situation vs. FLOW and ref's just lolling it up

I take replays every day of the week

No doubt, but at this moment in time southampton look like one of the few legitimately good teams. Going to be a tough ask for Chelsea coming off of 2 poor results.

LOL 30 seconds. Might be like that at first, but then soon we'll start seeing 2-3 minute commercial breaks for every decision because $$$.

Has to be a way to regulate it to have it run efficiently. Or anything else, I am not married to the idea of replays necessarily. I just refuse to believe that, in the year 2015, we have to put up with some of the ******ed **** that goes on still in games due to an antiquated refereeing system

We have self-driving cars on the roads and just found flowing water on mars but in a multi-billion dollar industry we still have to watch fat idiots (most of which probably have some deep-seated problems with authority) fumble around the pitch making incorrect decisions that have massive consequences and implications for everyone involved.

I respect that a lot of solutions are impractical, but goal-line tech and some sort of way to assist in offside rulings just has to be the bare minimum.

He was apparently in the frame to play last weekend until a few days before, so I'm hopeful he may feature this weekend, although there has been nothing said about him.

He's very much part of our plans. I imagine against worse teams he'll play as a two with Wanyama with someone else in front (JWP/Davis/perhaps Tadic etc.), but against the better teams have him as the most advanced member of the midfield 3, with Wanyama and Romeu behind.

Think a big problem with refs is that many of them are just too stupid and unfit. Pay 200k a year and encourage sporty law grads to apply to become professional referees and we'd see fewer colossal cock ups.

this weekend's free money comes in the form of Arsenal @ 2.1

yw

Not gonna happen.

Yah, two poor results but I'm expecting them to turn it around very quickly, they've got to. We're in October now they might be out of the title race by November if this continues!

yeah I guess the yw was for the utd fans!

Goal line tech is great because it's instant. Having the same thing for offsides is way more complicated, though. First of all, the offsides rule is not binary as the goal/no-goal rule is. It's also not stationary, as is the goal line.

Also, it's ******ed as **** to argue that, because we have self-driving cars and found water on a planet, we should have fat idiots sit in a TV booth taking ages to manually come up with a decision as opposed to fat idiots on the pitch making instant decisions.

Like its easy to feel this way and it would be one thing if they were running bad vs their stats but their results have been very in line with what the numbers say.

Would lay Chelsea until their defensive stats improve. They've basically had only 45 min of not being **** all year on defense which was vs arsenal before the red card.

99% of offside decisions are binary though, and linesmen still f some of them up - although, to be honest, I actually think most linesmen are fairly competent.

there is enough money flying around the blitw that it wouldn't be too hard to programme tech* that could distinguish whether or not a ball-playing part of the body was, say, 5 inches + offside. anything else could be called the GREY ZONE (brought to you by Carlsberg) and left up to the linesman.

*unless Hawk-eye could do it

Read it again. I wasn't arguing that at all.

I said I wasn't married to replays. The comment about the cars/mars etc. was aimed at just that; technology. All I am saying is I'm really going to have a hard time believing that creating efficient offside technology is impossible. Definitely complicated and expensive, but impossible? If it is possible then to my mind it's worth it. Getting offside's right is, through volume of decisions, more important than goal-line tech and probably more important than anything else. The amount of illegal goals or goals incorrectly disallowed due to the inability of the human eye to consistently and correctly judge these types of things is staggering.

If it is, in fact, impossible, then fair enough. But I'd need proof of that to be honest.

The thing is, I'm OK (in general) with human error in refereeing. If an automated system made an error, I'd be furious as ****, though. So, if they can come up with a system that's (for all intents and purposes) infallible and that makes instant offsides decisions, I'd be cool with it. And by "infallible" I mean, call offsides when it's 100% sure and stfu when it isn't (Carlsberg GREY ZONE).

I just think it's not as trivial to develop something like this as it sounds on the face of it.

Fair enough.

See rugby, tennis and cricket for examples of trivially simple yet crucial decisions being confirmed / corrected by a guy with a monitor and a headset in a matter of seconds. Absurd that football refuses to embrace this technology given the billions at stake.

Very fair point.

All I know is that I can point to at least 4 different instances (only that I know of and remember, haven't seen all of the games) in the EPL already this season where illegal goals stood and a legal goal disallowed and it annoys the living hell out of me.
Maybe it's just something we have to live with I don't know.

'don't let perfect be the enemy of good' - someone

True.

Pile on United!

Also going to bet small on BTTS and United + BTTS.

I think if you wait a little, you might be able to get up to 2.2 on them, and agree that both are very good bets. If for no other reason than to trade.