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Listed below are comments made by thebunshop between Wednesday, 11th June 2008 and Friday, 1st May 2009.

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Weekly Bonus Question 9:22pm on 01 May 2009 How would you describe London winning the Olympics?
Hiddink holds his nerve 2:26pm on 15 Apr 2009 The Unused Substitute - spot on. Both sides of Drogba on display there last night. Incredible strength made our defence look weak, Carragher and Skrtel barely won a ball off him all game, he's almost unplayable when he stays on his feet and uses his upper body like that. However his play-acting is made all the more obvious by his obvious physical attributes. He could do a lot worse than watch Rooney play, another player with considerable strength who rarely goes down easily or feigns injury. Having said that he probably doesn't want to pick up Rooney's temper. I'm not claiming that Drogba is the only player who play-acts but he does it in such an obvious way that he really is inviting all the criticism he gets. If he could remove that from his game he would get nothing but praise.

It's something that no-one likes to see in football, except when the player in question is your team's striker and it's a crunch match in the league/cup and time is running out. Then it doesn't seem quite so bad does it? "Yes, he dived but the defender left his leg in so it was probably a foul anyway," you kid yourself. I'm not proud when LFC players dive or play-act. I think Arbeloa was most obviously guilty of it last night: Cole did not deserve a yellow for that challenge.

On a separate but similar note it's interesting that all the Chelsea fans who laud Drogba's ability to 'legitimately bully' players off the ball (as I think someone put it) and yet when Mascherano does this it is called 'fouling'. Mascherano is tenacious in the extreme, a bit hot-headed sometimes but he is still young. A few more years and he won't be mis-timing so many of those tackles ;-)
How to build a sporting dynasty 12:36pm on 26 Mar 2009 sweetsmellofsuccess - on the whole I agree with what you say, you certainly need more than just money to be successful. Although I don't really like the man I've always wondered how Mourinho, for example, would have got on if he'd gone to a team with not quite so much money, (Liverpool, Villa, Spurs etc, ie still a fair bit to spend but not a bottomless pit).

One thing I have to disagree with though is what you say about Ferguson changing his assistant every few years to bring 'fresh ideas and innovations'. Almost all of his assistants left of their own accord to take on new roles. Archie Knox left to work with Walter Smith at Rangers, Brian Kidd was promoted from inside but wanted to try his hand at management and left to manage Blackburn, to probably his and their regret. Steve McClaren was appointed from Derby but eventualy left to manage Middlesbrough whilst Carlos Queiroz left to manage Real Madrid and then left again to manage Portugal.

What I'm trying to say is that Ferguson didn't really have much choice when his assistants left, they all left of their own accord and Ferguson's hand was forced. He also promoted from within on at least a couple of occasions.
Ferguson the winner in CL draw 3:29pm on 20 Mar 2009 "Liverpool's confidence will be surging, but one poster made a very valid point about the return of Michael Essien being the equivalent of signing a £25m footballer. He is an outstanding player and athlete."

Phil, I'd go further and say that Essien is the reason behind Chelsea's recent resurgence, rather than Hiddink. Of course he's a great manager but I bet if Scolari has been watching for the last few weeks he'll be thinking he might still be manager there if he'd had Essien to call on all season. As a Liverpool fan I'm gutted he's fit again in time for us to play them in the CL (although I still think we'll win!).

Also, I wonder what the Premier League table would look like if Essien and Torres had been fit all season, possible it would be a lot tighter at the top, shame we'll never know...
KP makes headlines again 01:01am on 05 Feb 2009 Disappointing from most of the top order, really would have liked to have seen Shah given a chance, possibly instead of Collingwood but probably Bell. What a marvellous innings from Pietersen though.

If, and it's a fairly big 'if', Prior can stick around and pick up a half century and Flintoff can continue with the same discipline then we could still be looking at 350-400 which after the first hour you would have bitten your own arm off for. Here's hoping...
Capello will keep England grounded 5:01pm on 08 Oct 2008 I find it rather odd that so many people are talking about Gerrard "not delivering" for England (and that someone has even gone to the trouble of listing a few games where this has happened). You all seem to be forgetting that in pretty much all of those games THE ENTIRE TEAM DID NOT DELIVER. Starting to worry that Gerrard is in danger of becoming the new scapegoat for crap England performances in Lampard's place.

Over the past few years you'll find that the vast majority of players to have pulled on an England shirt have regularly underperformed whilst wearing it, so it is a little unfair to single out Gerrard even if we might expect a little more from him given his outstanding performances for Liverpool over the years. That in itself is unfair though as most of the England squad have played very well for their clubs down the years, that's why they're in the England squad.

I think one of the big problems, one that no-one here has addressed is the number of foreign managers in the English game. Before you start saying 'What are you talking about?' my reasoning is that one of our issues is the myriad of different systems our Premiership clubs use. After trying to play very specific roles for their clubs the players are being asked to adapt to a new system for only one or two games at a time. I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence that many of England's best performances came at a time when virtually all the clubs in England were playing a 4-4-2 formation and so was the national squad.
Staying calm in Beijing - with a little help from my friends! 8:12pm on 06 Aug 2008 Thanks Mike
Olympic countdown - 54 - London beats Paris 5:26pm on 16 Jun 2008 London!

At least some of the new venues would actually get used again...
Unpredictable politics 3:58pm on 13 Jun 2008 It's a clever little trick he's pulled but I'm surprised by the number of people calling his move, amongst other things, "brave", "bold", "daring" etc.

He's given up a seat where between them the Conservatives and Lib Dems held nearly 85% of the vote at the last election with Labour trailing in with around 12%. The chances of his losing that seat at a by-election, particularly in the current climate, are slim even if all the Conservative voters in the area are in favour of the 42 day rule because they will still vote for him to keep Labour out. If I was Gordon Brown I wouldn't waste my time and the tax payers money fighting it, I would get on with trying to get the Government back on track.
You Are The Ref #4 4:13pm on 11 Jun 2008 Callum-CelticFC Are you trying to take over the question setting? ;-)

I'm not sure that scenario could ever happen as I don't think the referee would ever signal to the defender to come back onto the field of play in that situation.

Regarding today's conundrum, it would surely be at the discretion of the referee, and I would think a drop ball might be the best response. Given all the answers to previous 'Ask the Ref's' on this website, in particular the one about the defender repeatedly heading the ball back to the goalkeeper I would have thought that this could potentially be construed as a 'deliberate trick' by the defender and could theoretically be given as an indirect free-kick or whatever the punishment is for that offence.

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