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Unfortunately for them, their key bright young players belong to other clubs. Take Wilson, Mount and Tomori out of their squad and they would struggle.

Only one honest to admit he does it?! Only one who has been caught you mean. Had they not been rumbled at Derby, they'd have carried on doing it in the background. Hardly "honest" behaviour, is it?

Frank Lampard mentioned something about pliers, so will obviously go with what he said. If the spy (and yes, he was a spy, simple as that) was watching on from a public area as opposed to land owned by DCFC, I’m not sure why the police picked him up in the first place then?Regardless, cheating should not be accepted in the field of sport, it goes against the spirit of the game - you might find it all a bit ‘ridiculous’, but the bigger pictures that it’s exactly this kind of lack of integrity that harms the name of our beautiful game. Any other form of cheating would be heavily punished by the FA/EFL, so I do not see why this incident should be exempt from ‘even investigation’, no matter how ridiculous you find it.

I’ve always thought the rule was that if any part of the body with which you can legally score (ie not your hand/arm) is beyond the last defender, it’s offside? As for the point re VAR for offside decisions, it absolutely shouldn’t be used during the game if nothing comes of the chance. We don’t need every inconsequential decision to be reviewed. However, in cricket if there’s a wicket, they review the bowler’s front foot to see if it’s a “no ball” as standard; you could have something like that - if there’s a goal, you’ve got a man in the studio who automatically checks for offside. You’d need specific rules - you only check for offside from the assist (ie; you can’t go back to a pass which happened fifty seconds ago). VAR being implemented for things like penalties is tricky though. In rugby and cricket, there are clear phases to a game even in when in open play (each delivery in cricket, or each ruck/maul/breakdown in rugby). In football there aren’t clear phases like that. So, in cricket the technology has a limited amount of things and a limited timeframe it can be checking for - is it a front foot no ball, has it bounced before the fielder catches it, or Hawkeye for lbw. In rugby, I believe they can ask the tv ref only two specific questions (“I think it’s a try, is there any reason I can’t give a try”, and “try or no try?”), there are clear rules which define what answers the tv ref can give and the tv ref can only go back and review two phases of play (I think). I think the tv ref can also comment if there has been a yellow or red card offence the on field ref hasn’t seen. In football if a ref asked a tv official “is there any reason I can’t give a penalty?” how far do you go back? Do you check every forward pass since the ball last went out of play for an offside, do you check every ‘fair’ challenge since the last set piece to see if a foul was actually committed but missed, do you go back to the last set piece, or the last time the opposition touched the ball, do you focus only on the specific tackle/foul? If it is going to stay, there need to be rules somewhat similar to rugby. We need tv officials (not just on field refs watching replays), specific scenarios that can be referred to those tv refs and, ideally, specifically worded questions with specific answers and specific protocols for what the tv refs can and can’t review when coming up with those answers. For me, it’s too complicated to get right for penalty calls. Goal line technology works and works well. Something such as offside “spot checking” by a man in a studio on all goals scored could also potentially work. Anything else is all just a bit too difficult to get right.

I think Duncan Edwards wrote this, sent it to the local media, it's a plant.😋

I watched. All I heard was Carolan saying that Leeds-related people who were known to be "coaches" were identified at various points "round the ground". Where were they exactly. In the stands? In among the stewards and photographers around the touchline? There is no rule which says that a coach cannot be seated anywhere other than the dugout. If I remember rightly, in the Lambert days, Culverhouse regularly sat in the directors' box to get a better view. Steve Maclaren pretty much always spends the first half of any game in the directors' box at any club he manages. As I understand it, the rule is that actual coaching, i.e. issuing instructions to players on the pitch during the game, can only be done from the technical area. I didn't hear Dave Carolan say, for example, that when Stoke had a corner, Leeds had a "coach" behind the goal organising the defence, or that "coaches" at various points around the touchline were shouting instructions to players about their positioning or whatever. How exactly do you "coach" from the stands? As for "the spirit of the game", what spirit is that? The spirit that engages in time wasting, professional fouling, trying to get an opponent sent off, contesting every refereeing decision, trying to hijack other' clubs's transfers, approvingly referring to "having a right to go down", tapping up other club's managers, tapping up players, and so on, and so on. and so on. The whole thing is just a huge stink of manufactured, holier-than-thou, outrage from people eagerly jumping on high horses.

Trybull hasn't been great for a while but he seems the obvious choice to step in- Thompson would be a big gamble fitness wise.

I would go slightly different. Krul Aarons Zimmermann Godfrey Lewis Thompson Vrancic Buendia Stiepermann Cantwell Pukki

Perhaps we need to sign a couple of players "to give the lads a hand" and to get us over the line?

A big few games for Trybull you would assume. Did well against Villa if I remember correctly.

Does that translate to I am a donut?

Whoah!! How long do you reckon the ball is connected to the foot for? Enough time for somebody stood potentially 20-30 metres away to be able to discern the difference?

Not quite FANCY A GAME LADS but still pretty good.

It's as the pass was made, which is impossible, for a linesman - he has to look at two places at once

Gaining unfair advantage over your opponents needs investigating at the very least otherwise the game it's self will continue down the slippery slope of disrepute. Goodness knows what he might have found out, players missing, tactics at corners, penalty takers, Bradley Johnson's latest hairstyle. The list is endless. No wonder Lampard was furious at being subject to dirty tricks. This was an important fixture. 'Spies' taking notes at games is fair enough, but spying on your opponents preparing for that game is blatant cheating. Unsavoury.