For me, Its not what Costa did himself with Koscielny its his reaction once he gets a reaction if that makes sense. Don't throw yourself about like you're hard and then run to the Ref when someone reacts.

If you look at the incident from the weekend Koscielny gets straight back up to his feet. Does Costa act the same after what Gabriel did?

The idea that Costa "plays on the edge" is a fallacy imo, He literally runs around trying to wind everyone up before running to the Ref once he's got someone.


If you eliminate the "Costa actions" you eliminate the problems too.

This is also known as having a good Ref.

The ref was one of the top ref's in the league.

He made mistakes. It happen's

But you don't compound those mistakes by making mistakes like what happened during the game

Wasn't it always the same though Don ? The arrival of the Internet and social media has made the difference, before that it was just down the pub discussing the games with your mates. Now everything is blown out of all proportion by the sheer number of people involved.
Plus of course, there's so much more coverage these days. Match of the day on Saturday nights, and Sunday's afternoon game was all we had for a long time. Even the Sunday game was an exciting addition when it arrived. I almost (but not quite) feel sorry for non-footie fans these days, my local is quite small but has four screens showing practically non-stop football or rugby at present.

Eva has gone .............. expect a constructive dismissal claim and or court case!

I don't think so.

Crowds was massive back in the day etc, Football was just as massive, Yet you did not have this continued nonsense over players or wages anything else. Ron Harris for example, He made Costa look like a BFG but you never saw the rubbish spouted about him. People would talk about him but the wording and language used today makes Costa's and other players actions sound like they are in league with Hitler etc.

I think there is way too much coverage and do see it as one of the major problems. If it was up to me, The broadcast would start 5 minutes before kick off and end 10 minutes after. I really don't see the draw of over discussing something like we have nowadays, For me it takes something away from the game, Yes have discussions with your mates down the pub and on social media etc but I think cutting down on the coverage would help to make the discussions better. The more time you give over to something as with most things the first thing to suffer is the quality

It's become to much like a TV show for me, I enjoy watching Game Of Thrones think its a fantastic show well written etc but people take it to extremes for example with the ending of the last season and if Jon Snow is dead or not you have people going to insane levels trying to prove he is alive because at 59:02 during the episode someone did this or did that. Instead of enjoying it they are taking to a obsession and that's never a good place to go.

The constant bombardment I think has taken some enjoyment out of the game.

For me Football is something I enjoy, I go to the games I enjoy meeting up with a bunch of mates before the game, I go to the ground and met up with another bunch of mates have a chat have a laugh with them Sing a few songs (for example at weekend Petr Petr let one in Petr Let one in) when the game is over might met up with another bunch of mates have a laugh might even meet up with mates who are fans of the team we just played hopefully take the mickey out of them if we won. If its an away game and I don't go and we on TV, Off to the pub I go with a few mates from different teams again have a laugh etc. If you look at some of the people just discussing the Costa incident do they sound like they are enjoying themselves? Do they sound like they are enjoying "football", Words like thug,ugly,nasty violent etc etc are not something I associate with having fun. Even when its talking like a mundane thing like wages of today's top players on the main people sound rather bitter about it.

Maybe its just me but I think today people take it way to seriously and have taken it unhealthy levels.

Maybe its because they watch so much of it, You can now just about watch a game every single night,

Ohh no.

This is dreadful news,

Has Fred the cleaner left as well?

I know they was rather close

What mistake? The red card has been overturned.

The stuff with Eva is the sort of stuff I talking about.

She a very minor member of the back-room staff and its got how much coverage?

I think when Ray Wilkins left it did not drag on as much as this and he was actually a important part of the staff

Could understand it if it was Billy Blood but it just seems so pointless to me

That don't matter.

At the time what he did was a dumb move.

He should not have done what he did.

He should have done what I would do and I would expect any intelligent person to do and walk away.

You really have got a bad memory. His goals helped us win the league.
We are Champions mate. I know you don't seem to like that fact but we are.

Good to see you make a positive comment on the win as well. Oh....

How does it not matter? The FA have admitted the Red Card was unjust, therefore he did nothing wrong...

At the time he did something wrong.

What the FA or what anyone else thinks or thought is not important.

The only decision that matters is the ref's at that time.

At that time the only person who opinion really matters said he did.

I know today we all like to think our views count but they really don't. A person who saw the incident view is as unimportant as someone who has never seen a single second of any football game. Unless that person's name is Mike Dean and they was standing on the pitch at Stamford Bridge they don't matter

The ref thought he did something wrong so he did.

But they was more then likely the wrong type of goals.

They was not the type of goals random people like.

He needs to score goals in a "nice and popular way"

Yep, if there's one thing that turns me off the game thesedays it's the over-the-top outrage at everything. Furthermore usually the people getting so worked up tend to be riddled with double standards, their level of outrage is completely dependant on what team is involved. It's one thing having an opinion on something, but some people really take theirs to extremes.

That crappy show the X Factor makes a good comparison to football. It's less about the actual singing and more about the soap opera bullshit that surrounds it, and that's the way football's gone.

I would not mind if it was decent soap opera bulls@it but it's not we have utterly idiotic nonsense now of someone saying that Arsenal should be award the points from the weekends game. It's ridiculous the levels this insanity has reached.

The win has been overshadowed and spoilt by all the silly, childish crap initiated by Costa.

I want him to get back to the player he was for the first half of last season - being agressive AND scoring goals. He's faded badly this year.

No the win has not been overshadowed.

It might have been overshadowed and spolit for you by the silly childish crap initiated by the media but it's definitely not been overshadowed or spolit for most fans.

Very little can spoil a winner against Arsenal

It's odd that this is the way that the game has evolved.

But this forum generally tends to be quite sensible. That said, your post could be exclusively about one poster in particular. And I'm sure that you know who I'm referring to.

You seem to think there's something wrong or strange about wanting Chelsea to be well liked by neutrals
Numerous teams around the world have shown that successful teams can be very well liked by many neutrals. I don't see why we shouldn't strive to be one of those teams, instead of always seeming to do our best to piss of as many fans as possible.

Because on the list of the objectives that we as a club need to achieve at the moment it's lower then having the best burgers in the premiership

We've now got a shed load of trophies with our name on them.
It's time we looked to try and move on to the next level, not to be happy to be a Millwall with money and trophies.

No where near the amount we should have.

The level where we need to worry about the views of random's (and I finding myself wondering if some are intelligent enough to worry about if you look at the Costa thread) we are not anywhere near yet.

There have been to many stop and starts at the club over the last 10 years for us to get to that level. We need at least 3 more titles and a title defence first

Out of interest, who are the successful club teams that you think are almost universally liked? I can't think of any around at the moment.

Heh, yeah I know exactly who you mean even though it doesn't just apply to them on this forum. Very tiresome and transparent that particular poster is though.

That's just the other side to Costa's game. I can understand why some may find his behaviour unsporting, but we knew that from his Atletico days. You have people lambasting Mourinho for encouraging his behaviour, but some of the stuff Costa did at Atletico was far worse, but you don't see the same people chastising Simeone because it doesn't fit the narrative.

I get it. Some of the stuff he does isn't particularly nice and at times I wish he would tone it down. There's been a couple of times this season where we've conceded possession and Costa's too busy looking for a foul rather than helping the team to recover the ball. But it seems that most of the time, due to his abrasive nature, his antics are more highlighted whereas others are a bit more underhanded about it. Take a look at Sanchez's punch on Ivanovic which I posted in my other post - it was hardly mentioned in any post match analysis which is why I find it hard to take all this faux outrage seriously at times.