Not a comment on our defence but on general defending in the PL: it seems to be all-round shite. Why is this? I've mentioned this before, but last season, George Graham commented that he had NEVER seen defences as poor as those in the PL and Arsene Wenger commented that there were almost no decent centre halves to be found. This season, on "The Premiership", we see defensive error after defensive error: almost every goal in the Spurs-ManUtd game was a defender's error. At SJP, we have seen one side defend convincingly and that's Liverpool. Equally, for England games, Germany could have put apout 4 past us and it was largely down to luck that Albania didn't score. I can't work this out, because in the past, if you named one top flight team, you could name at least one good defender in that team. Now, you'd struggle to name and agree upon more than six or seven really good defenders in the whole PL. Any thoughts?

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2001

Answers

Disappearance of the drinking culture that meant that even if you couldn't run more than ten yards, you would spend numerous evenings 'bonding' with your team mates. Even if the brain cells were being destroyed in their thousands, at least those that were left had a chance of being on the same alcohol-induced wave length. Perhaps not...;-)

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2001

Just a few random thoughts.

1) Football is a non-contact sport
2) The new backpass rule, Shay Given at times - oh my God!
3) Footballers are cheating diving gets
4) The last man sending off rule
5) The new balls serve amazingly, remember the freekick by Troyes


-- Anonymous, October 05, 2001

the back pass rule has made a huge difference - it forces defenders to play the ball- , as has the time limit on goalkeepers which has extended the effective playing time.

from my viewpoint (behind the goal in the leazes and gallowgate ends) there have never been any good defenders ever.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2001