More on the penalty. "Am I the only one who can clearly see Gibbs clip Bale?" says Russell Courts. Here's the crux of the matter: Bale definitely wasn't touched by Szczesny, but he might have been by Gibbs - only, it was impossible to tell. Bale certainly played for it, and in real time, I suspect that Mike Dean wasn't entirely sure what happened and assumed he'd been fouled, which is why he didn't send off Szczesny.
Here's a debate for you. "Penalties are silly, aren't they?" says Paul Szabo. "How often is a 'clear goalscoring opportunity' actually converted in open play? A lot less often than the resulting penalties are made. Another example of football's crap feature of the punishment not fitting the crime (red cards meaning one man down, not just the one man out). So there."
There's something in this. Should a penalty be awarded when, for example, someone's going away from goal or taking the ball out of the area, and every defender is in the box? I wrote about the last-man rule here two years ago. Have a read and see what you think.
Half time emails.
"Clearly Harry is a genius at getting the best out of wayward and "has been" players (Saha and Adebayor)," says Simon Reece. "What chance a recall for Stan Bowles for the Euros?"
"That dive will have took some value from Bale's transfer fee - he'll only be worth £150 million now," says John Reid.
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