Pickford, Richarlison and the Whole Sh * t show Fallout on the block

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Publication date: Tuesday, October 20, 2020 12:31 PM

This week everyone is a jerk, but especially Jordan Pickford. In retrospect, there was never any chance that such a major Merseyside derby could produce another result.

So who is this week’s jerk?

Deep breath … Jordan Pickford, Richarlison, twitter dot com, Liverpool fans (yes, yes, #NotAllLiverpoolFans), Piers Morgan, Graeme Souness, Mark Bosnich and literally anyone else who made a ridiculously terrible tackle during the Merseyside derby Saturday (probably covered them to be fair) or embraced a ridiculous opinion afterwards (not even remotely covered).

They have done?

You know what they have done. Jordan Pickford brought out Virgil van Dijk for the season with an inning of such savage incompetence and violence that everyone else decided to lose their minds as much as he did.

This was exacerbated by the VAR’s decision not to consider whether this warranted a red card for a previous offside, and then it was sent through the stratosphere when the severity of the RVD injury came to light.

Graeme Souness – Graeme Souness! – described it as “an assault”. Piers Morgan (I know, I know) brought up the stupidest opinion anyone can express about anything that happens in sport, namely that “if you did that on the street, you would be arrested for assault!” Okay, yes. Most tackles would constitute assault if committed at a bus stop rather than on a soccer field. Catch a pensioner at a zebra crossing and your claims that it was shoulder to shoulder will fall on deaf ears. Piers, of course, knows all this. I mean, his favorite sport is cricket, a game in which he is actively encouraged to throw a lethal weapon at a person’s head at 90 mph from 20 yards.

As for Souness’s opinion, it is fundamentally useless. Pickford has been a jerk, a Prickford so to speak, but this was a failure in decision making, technique and mindset as a footballer, not a failure as a human being. England’s No. 1 propensity for catastrophically poor decision making has literally been one of the biggest talking points in soccer in this country for the past two years. It didn’t come out of nowhere, but it didn’t come from Pickford being an imperfect human being, but from an imperfect footballer.

Well, to Richarlison. Stupid and dangerous tackle, rightly so, red card. That would be that, except that he couldn’t even get the standard statement of not apologizing entirely correct and then claimed that there was nothing wrong with the challenge anyway in a tweet instantly doomed to take its place in 723 stories with the words ‘quickly removed’.

That further infuriated Liverpool’s already feverish support who had responded to events thus far (Pickford’s tackle, Richarlison’s tackle, a late winner who was denied VAR) with their usual quiet dignity, but couldn’t. bear it more.

Cue the second dumbest opinion in sport: that a player who injures another player should be banned while the injured player is discarded. A triumph of emotion over logic and in no way open to massively obvious and pervasive abuse without even mentioning the extra game-spoiling thing that defenders need to worry about whenever they consider taking a challenge.

Well done everyone.

Any previous?

Nothing anyone involved has done here is unprecedented. It’s the perfect storm of everything that happens at once during and after the biggest Merseyside derby in Premier League history.

Mitigation?

It all happened during and after the biggest Merseyside derby in Premier League history.

So what happens next?

For most of those involved, very little. For Richarlison, a gentle nudge from his team to perhaps simply fail social media a bit after being sent off at the last minute of the biggest Merseyside derby in Premier League history. For Piers Morgan, literally the same as any other day. For Souness, nothing at all. For Liverpool fans, there is more evidence that they are special and different and that all other fans just don’t understand.

For Jordan Pickford, however, possibly something more significant than a red card or even the absurd injury ban. It begins to feel inexorable; we’ve been here so many times with the goalkeepers from England. When this material reaches a critical mass it is almost impossible to turn it around.

He could be Everton’s No.2 in no time, and on the England front you should consider yourself lucky that Nick Pope’s heroic deeds for Burnley against West Brom happened on PPV and thus only about 43 people know about them, including those who played in the game.

Mourinho corner

He brought Gareth Bale. The fool of José. Everyone thought it was a terrible idea, but he did it anyway.

Dishonorable mentions

The casual sexism of Sergio Agüero and the contempt of Pep Guardiola as something worth discussing; the fact that the stupid handball law is now also affecting the stupid offside law; defenders.

Prick of the Week Hall of Fame

No. 5: The Big Six
No 4: Deadline
No. 3: David Elleray
No. 2: Frank Lampard
No. 1: Jose Mourinho

Dave tickner



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