B93: Football thoughts

I can't summon up anything major so I'm going to throw some bullet points away on some footballing matters.

• If you're a professional footballer and you  miss a penalty by doing anything other than attempting to hit the ball hard into the corner of the goal, you deserve blame. Furthermore, if you score a penalty by doing anything but hitting the ball hard into the corner of the goal, you should be told to next time stop fucking around and kick the ball hard into the corner. Every single professional footballer has the technique to do that. Penalties are a preposterous ego trip/con where footballers suddenly think they're chess players, not people whose greatest gift is being able to strike a football hard and true.
• Football would be so much better if penalties were only worth half a goal. Penalties are the biggest problem with modern day football, nearly always a far greater reward for the situation they are caused by than is merited. So they become the aim in themselves. Genuinely, if Spurs have won 1-0 with the only goal being a penalty, I don't really count is a proper win. So, yeah, people will start committing more professional fouls. Fine. Half-goal. Move on.
• International goalkeepers should be picked purely on international form. Ludicrous that people talk about Pickford, who has always been magnificent for England, being dropped on his Everton form. Likewise, this is what happened with Paul Robinson, and see what happened there, and, likewise, Joe Hart, an ok club keeper and terrible England keeper, held on to the position for far too long. Pickford should be England Number 1 until he makes several bad mistakes for England.
• Guardiola does not deserve to be called a great manager, like Ferguson, Mourinho, Klopp, Wenger, Mancini etc. are. Maybe a great coach, but ultimately, by his own choices, what he has done as a manager with three of the most well-resourced teams in the history of football is par, if that.
• The Nations League is genius. Most football decisions of the last three decades have been bad, but the Nations League is perfect as a way to make international football not be boring, but equally, just not get over excited about. When England were in the Nations League semi-final, it was moderately exciting, which was very pleasant.
• Spursy isn't an actual thing. It's a perfectly good joke, but I think a lot of people think it's an actual thing. Spurs have, historically, won 8 FA Cup finals out of 9 appearances. They have not blown a premier league title, they were never on top in the closing stages of the league. The year they were second to Chelsea, they won 12 of their last 13 games in the league. Champion form, it's just Chelsea didn't falter. They've beaten Man City twice in the last minute in big games, reached Champions League final in last minute, generally in the last 15 years or so, won more games late than lost, I'm quite sure. They have lost big games late, but so does everybody. "Lads, it's Tottenham" is about that specific place in the pecking order they have, with less successful clubs being envious and the real top juggernaut clubs just knowing they've got the edge and putting the nearly-club in its place. But Spurs were a medium-sized club who had 15 years of mediocrity, who then had a period of sustained good achievement, almost achieved the absolute top without doing anything obscene to get there. For all the frustrations, I'd rather be a Tottenham fan over the last 10 years than any team except Liverpool and Leicester.
• VAR's still fine. Getting a bit better. Not perfect, but ok.