I've heard that his dive was worse than Suarez's. Haven't seen a gif of it though, so can't link to it.

I didn't see any stories this week about Bale complaining about not getting penalties when he deserves them. I did see Liverpool whining about Suarez not getting them though.

I've not seen that one, they didn't show that on the bulletin I watched, I suppose because there were actually some goals to show on their section.

It shouldn't matter though, referees shouldn't go into any game believing in a sort of 'reputation'. It's this sort of thing that has meant Paul Scholes has avoided 50+ red cards in his career. Suarez's dive today was stupid and embarrassing, but can you blame him? He's getting fouled in the box every single week and he isn't getting a thing, he hasn't had a sniff.

Today we played Stoke, we played a few young lads and generally a technically strong side. Every single one-two, every single 'triangle' we got into, we were fouled. Every time one of our players beat one of theirs, he was fouled. Referees just seem to accept that Stoke are a disgrace and they'll be far more lenient with them than they should be. Robert Huth could break a player's leg next week, yet Pulis and so will be out saying he's a nice lad and it's not in his character.

IMO, Stoke are an unbelievably lucky side who expose the game's biggest weakness; refereeing. I don't care how the game was 30 years ago, we killed teams by passing the ball back and forth to our goalkeeper 30 years ago, the game has changed and Stoke are still being refereed as though the game is being played 30 years ago. Referees have a duty to ref the game fairly, for them to constantly let their players get away with late fouls, shirt pulling, 'wrestling' and generally underhand tactics with the aim to 'batter' the opposition, not 'beat' them.

No, I'm not, please don't insult me.....However, I'm a football fan who appreciates watching decent football, and whenever I see Stoke in action, I see nothing resembling decent football.

I'm all for sides making the most of their strengths, but Stoke take it to an ugly extreme....If the other 19 sides in the league played football like that, the game would die a very quick death because nobody would go to watch it.

Go on, tell me why? Why am I thick? If you're going to call somebody thick, at least punctuate your sentence properly.

I hate Stoke, they are a disgrace to the sport. They get their points, whatever, we can't beat their tactics and we probably never will, but that doesn't hide the point of their tactics being unbelievably shameless.

Pulis, IMO, may be the worst manager ever in the sport, purely because he doesn't challenge himself and doesn't show any sort of innovation or desire. He signs the same type of player, he plays the same tactics - home or away - and he doesn't challenge himself as a manager at all. Pulis could be put in charge of Barcelona, he'd still sign Dean Whitehead and Robert Huth, he'd get them to defend in two banks of five and they'd play the same way as Stoke do. The man's a complete and utter disgrace, if any foreign manager came up with tactics like that he'd be destroyed by the British media.

Surprising win up at Newcastle today, thought it had 1-1 or 2-2 written all over it. Wish Hernandez would start instead of Welbeck though.

Were Liverpool unlucky again today? Or just sh*te again? Love it when Stoke take points off them, Roddy is funny. Bigger teams like Liverpool who have been sponsored by Sky since '92 reap what they sow IMO, teams who Sky DON'T w*nk over will tend to have less £, so will have to make do with inferior players so have to play how best suits them to stay up. It's not Stoke's fault you're sh*t.

Fouls committed Stoke 16 Liverpool 9. Guess you didn't do too much in the 90 minutes.



You've said on here how many times you hate Stoke. Aren't you kind of biased against them?

If Suarez breaks someone leg next week, Rogers will be saying what a great lad he is and his team mates will be wearing T shirts protesting his innocence.



Stoke are clearly a physical side who aim to put superior sides off their stride. The top sides are able to rise above it. Liverpool aren't. That's what makes you hate them so much.

As I said, referees are lenient with Stoke. There was a foul every time we passed it about, but the ref constantly ignored it. Half of our fouls were pathetic but the ref reffed us like any other side, but with Stoke he took particular exception to their tactics.

That's what gets me, LGJM. We aren't one of the very top sides any more but Stoke still play us like they are. We barely played with a forward as an outlet today, but their defence still sits in their box and a midfielder would often drop in to make it a nice 5 at the back.

I hate Stoke's football and I hate that they are now 'established', but they still play like some plucky chancers who've fluked their way up through promotion. I'm not asking for them to be Barcelona, I'm asking for them to play football and for their coach to instruct his side to play football. Every game, every opposition, they do the same sh*t, we can't beat it, I get that but it still irritates the f*ck out of me.

It would help with this stance of your club hadn't spent the last week trying to claim you've been badly done to because Suarez has been denied a bunch of pens he should have got.



Well part of the problem there is that Paul Scholes was some kind of national treasure and it was just a joke that he couldn't tackle. A problem that Liverpool fans helped to foster because of their mutual masturbation club with United fans.



Suarez is clearly part of the problem in that he is clearly willing to dive when it suits. He hasn't helped himself with today's ridiculous effort.



I dislike Tottenham about half as much as I dislike Liverpool, so that's still quite a lot. But I don't think Bale has done too much wrong there. He braced himself for collision after nicking the ball away because it looked like he was going to get kicked. With the speed he was going as soon as his stride was altered he was going down. The keeper then halted his kicking motion before impact so it looks like Bale has just blatantly dived when really it was just the combination of factors that caused it.

For me, I'd have just waved play on and left them to it.

The clip doesn't show the aftermath, but what were the responses from the players? If Bale got up and started saying he'd been clipped then he'd have earned himself a yellow. If he just said he braced himself then there's no issue.

brad guzan laughed at him

Our club has rightly complained about the standard of officiating in our games. It's frustrating that Suarez dove today, as I said it was embarrassing, but that shouldn't alter any future decision a referee should make, just as not giving them the most obvious one against Norwich the other week shouldn't influence them.

I rated Scholes as a player but the embarrassing ignorance towards his tackling was/still is a joke. This approach seems to be taken towards Stoke too, only they're not as popular.

Suarez should have been booked for his dive today and that should have been the end of it. The funny thing is he's been booked for it a couple of times this season and I don't think he actually dove, yet today when he did it wasn't penalised. If referees go into a game believing that someone is a diver and they'll ref them as so, they shouldn't be refereeing. Simple as, really.

See, your point on Bale I kind of agree with. Players should jump out of the way and do everything to avoid contact at all costs, but referees refuse to give decisions without contact, which is the sort of thing Stoke expose. I don't know how the players reacted to the Bale thing, but I do know plenty of fans that criticise Suarez for going down/avoiding bad challenges. Saddened done it the other day. Suarez came on against Udinese, a bad challenge came his way, contact was made but he got out of the way in a manner that seemed to exaggerate contact. Regardless of exaggeration, it was a bad foul but fans and referees refuse to see it that way, largely because they're utterly deluded because of things they seen "thirty years ago".

What makes people like Pulis an utter c*nt is the way he comes out and comes out with sh*te criticising Suarez for falling over, yet his player used Suarez as a surfboard and it's Suarez who should be taking the criticism. He then has the cheek to say players like Suarez are putting pressure on referees, when his talentless bunch are kicking the sh*t out of teams every week and getting away with it. Suarez should have been given a yellow card, quite rightly, but Huth should have been sent off yet he has the nerve to say the ref should be giving bookings out to us. Horrible coach.

Pulis did it to us a few games ago. Although he did have a point with most of the claims.

Ivanovic made a stupid dive, nearly as bad as Suarez's.

Luiz made a horrible challenge. An orange challenge that could have been either. If it was a Stoke player Pulis would have been saying yellow, because it was Luiz he was saying it should have been red.

But I think Oscar was booked for a supposed dive when when a Stoke player was coming in to chop him. It was similar to Bale's today, only the defender was straight in front of him. The defender dived in, nowhere near the ball, but stopped right before contact. Oscar braced himself, there literally was nowhere he could go, went over, and the ref booked him for supposedly diving.

Suarez isn't the only one not to get pens. Hazard has got 4 pens I think so far. Each one of them 100% certs. But for some reason refs have stopped giving them even though the fouls are still happening.

The situation with Torres is even worse. Refs seem to be operating on a system where a foul on Torres needs to include a broken leg for him to get a decision.

The last few weeks Pulis has been running his mouth. Partly because Luis, Ivanovic and Suarez have given him easy targets, partly because he knows he will have a willing audience for talking about CFC and LFC players and partly because other managers have given Stoke a heap of this in the past.