Premier League 2011/12 Season

Where was the outrage? There was none.

Suarez biting someone and handling a ball was of no consequence until England missed out on the World Cup. Please don't deny this much at least- it all stems from that massive massive fuck-off delivered that day.

 

FWIW, I'd say fan base is at least a less transient measure of 'size' than wealth or even success if not an outright more meaningful one. If some club in the arsehole of Russia had consistently gone 100 years among the 5-10 best attended clubs in world football I'd say they'd certainly have earned the right to be considered bigger than lets say....Wigan, yeah. When shiek what's his name leaves City in the manure there'll still be 50k+ football supporters in Glasgow every single week watching whatever low end dross the vagaries ofthe TV market subjects them to - give them something decent to watch and you could likely double that. If there's something to which persists long enough to justify use of the term 'club' as distinguishable from 'team', it's fan base, no?

 

Absolutely right. The Premiership is on TV. Rangers are not. Who will know of a shieks glorious deeds in Glasgow?

 

I didnt think Suarez did a thing wrong with the handball either ::

 

Come on: there was an absolute outrage! You were here slagging off everyone on ITV, especially that Desailly prick, when they were going absolutely ballistic in the immediate aftermath. Don't re-write history.

MTF

 

I don't think he did then either. We had a full discussion about it here (Irish seems to have forgotten this) and I said I would have done the same. That's why I haven't even mentioned it in a derogatory context in this thread.

MTF

 

The real money is in the CL, though. That's the big gravy train. Rich bastards aren't ploughing zillions into Paris St Germain right now in the hope that they get the team on SKY, are they? PSG is a club of about equal size and status as Glasgow Rangers IMO.

MTF

 

Agreed (especially as fan-base is about the only measure by which I can justifiably describe NUFC as a 'big club' anymore)

MTF ::

 

No, you don't understand, Uruguyans have a special gene that allows them to slow the ball down in mid-air and make a decision. He made his decision. He decided to cheat. Anything about reflexes or neural-synapses is just something cooked up by deluded scousers.

What did you make of Gordon Taylor tying Liverpool in with the slave-trade???

Suarez, a descendant of black slaves himself at that.

Truly, England is run by cretins.

 

No no.......I mean the bid for the World Cup. Not the ball crossing the line.

 

I'm not on about that. You said that there was no outrage when Suarez handballed on the line against Ghana in the WC; it was of no consequence you said. That's bollocks- all of England was 'up in arms' about it, calling him all kinds of shitty names, whilst ITV had that prick Desailly screaming about 'all of Africa being robbed' as they showed replays of him celebrating when the subsequent penalty was missed. You were on here calling him all kinds of everything.

The only place with any sanity in the whole affair was here, where everyone universally agreed that he had done no wrong (me included).

MTF

 

No, I remember that. I do.

The late Christopher Hitchens used to say that the book a President writes before they know they are going to be President is usually the acid-test for their true opinions on things.

When Suarez handled the ball, the immediate studio aftermath in Dublin, Ireland, was that this was not cheating in the same sense of the Henry hand-ball.

When Suarez signed for Liverpool, the same media outlet, RTE, in Dublin, did not even broach the matter of the biting.

As soon as Suarez was found "on the probability of the evidence" to have "racially" offended Evra, the bite and the hand-ball became pertinent issues.

Suarez, according to Tony Evans, is now somebody who goes around biting people. And Ghana are now, we are reminded, a black team.

So before everyone knew that Suarez was going to be a racist, nobody cared about the bite or the hand-ball.

Thats the test.

As I was walking to St Ives I met a man with Seven wives.......

 

::

 

I am not denying you felt that way, just to be clear on that.

And I agree- ITV was big into this "All of Africa" thing.

But the hand-ball issue had gone away, in Ireland it was never an issue, until the Evra affair. Then every fucking detail, past or not, got super-sized.

 

Being a Liverpool based Everton fan right now is like being that character in a film who knows who the bad guy is from the outset,but is dismissed as a delusional obsessed fantasist by the masses,until that final 10 minutes where the guy is exposed for the utter bulb he really is and you are suddenly vindicated after an age of banging your head against a brick wall.

 

You knew Suarez was bad??? ::

 

I lifted that from another site - I think it's aimed at the entire LFC institution and fan cult.

 

I'm in a cult???? Stay close Joe, I am going to need you to help me through this.

And all this time I thought Saint David of Knowsley was the Cultist, with his Cult of Look at Me Aren't I Doing Well Imagine If I had Money I would be #1 and Probably Get The United Job With My Track Record.

 

1 - EX-missus (and not even his ex-wife at that) - which makes even more pathetic.
Evra? A victim??? ::
It's not the worst case at all: two players having a spat over one of them fucking his ex and not shaking hands vs two players have a spat over one of them using 'racist' language, one of whom got severely punished for it and then decided, "you know what? I'm not shaking hands with this guy".

2 - The FA vs Luis Suarez wasn't a legal matter for a start. I'm not going into the ins-and-outs of what Suarez said or didn't say ('negro'? 'negrita'? 'blackie'?) and whether Evra actually heard him in a crowded penalty box in front of The Kop, but go and read the FA report (if you dig enough, you'll find it on the Internet - lot of pages and pretty boring.)

3 - Yeah, I was being sarcastic listing those players. What I was doing was pointing out that what Suarez did on Saturday is NOTHING compared to what messers Terry, Rooney, Tevez, Barton, etc, etc have done.
And as for your 'Suarez made Dalglish look a cunt'?
Really?
And so Tevez not wanting to play in the Champions League and making Mancini look a cunt isn't worse?
Rooney determined to leave ManU a while back, 'a done deal' they all cried and then concocting with his scummy agent Paul Stretford to somehow force ManU/David Gill to keep and making Ferguson look a cunt isn't worse?

4 - I love you, man! ::

5 - Terry a shoe-in for England again when 'Our 'arry' gets the nod, prior to Euro '12.
Perfect timing and gain, crooked to the core.
As I said and you won't ever budge me on this: 'hypocrisy', 'holier-than-thou', 'self-importance', pseudo-moralistic' - that's England in a nutshell.

6 - Suarez isn't a cunt and I doubt he's a racist...you'll need to go and re-read some history books on South American and especially Uruguayan football.

 

I don't think Suarez is a racist, but i think he did make a racist comment towards Evra, presumably in the hope that he'd wind him up. I've read the FA report, for me the key thing that condemned Suarez in the eyes of the panel (and me) was the testimonies of Kuyt and Commoli.

They both stated that Suarez told them he'd said 'because you are black'. He said this to Commoli in Spanish, and then to Kuyt in Dutch, so there's no way it was a mistranslation. The only version of events this fits is Evra's.

 

Joe, you've become very active very recently.

 

That's exactly what I thought when I read the report, though IMO someone who makes racist comments is, prima facie, a racist.

MTF

 

What Suarez said was vulgar, but no less vulgar than what Evra began the conversation with. Suarez cannot possibly be a racist, he cannot possibly be considered as regarding himself as being superior to those from whom he is himself descended. You don't have to be the brains of Britain to grasp that.

 

Yes, the victim. The guy who was racially abused. The lengths to which people want to twist this is beyond comprehension. If anyone had the right to refuse a handshake, it was Evra, not Suarez

It was adjudicated by a QC, therefore it has at least quasi-legal status. Why was a QC used for the adjudication process if it was supposed to carry 'non-legal status'. How else is a QC going to adjudicate if not upon his own legal knowledge and experience? Oh, and I read the judgement when it came out, thanks. That's how I form my opinions on legal matters, by reading the judgments, rather than reading biased, second-hand newspaper reports on judgments. It's kind of my job.

Sorry, what exactly has Terry done wrong that is worse at this point? You haave dismissed the Bridge incident as 'pathetic', so it can't be that. This racism charge? He hasn't been convicted yet, so he is innocent until proven guilty I'm afraid.

As for the rest, they are all dickheads. All of them. Tevez acted disgracefully and is now ostracised. What does his case prove in respect of this one? Nothing at all: he has been treated in largely the same way. Rooney is a notorious prick.

As for Daglish: yes, he really has been made to look a total cunt by his player. Suarez apologised to Daglish for making him look a cunt. How is that an issue of dispute at this point?

To reiterate: I HATE Ingerland. Hate it. Bunch of self-absorbed, self-important, over-hyped cockney bastards. However, perhaps your hatred of the FA is clouding your judgment in this case...

No thanks. Someone who uses racist words, and refers to another person in derogatory fashion based on lines of colour or ethnicity, is racist. That's how things work. Perhaps you should read some history books on English football, particularly 1980's football culture, where you will find that refer to people on racial lines was commonplace and universally accepted. That must make it okay, then.

MTF

 

I am not going to start a semantic debate with you on the meaning of the term 'racist'.

MTF

 

I am not being frivolous but......I am not looking to drag it out either.

 

It's a forum, when i see a topic of interest, i'll post. But that was your point i suppose....

 

You've made some good points - and we could to-and-fro about this all day.
But I'm not gonna.

I'm not clouded by any hatred of the FA - I just know the games they're up to as well as you do.

I still think Suarez has been treated harsly from the get-go (see: all of Irish's posts). The words he uses (and probably many other South Americans) are almost impossible to translate into a contemporary English context. How do you judge the weight of a word uttered in a foreign language from a different mindset? :dunno:

'Negro' or 'Negrita': how to know when this word ceases to be descriptive and becomes pejorative?
And for the FA disciplinary committee, how to avoid kicking the case around like a political football?
They didn;t, they jumped on it like white-on-rice and used it to bash FIFA.

And unfortunately and espeically in 'Ing-er-land', when moral and public is whipped up, coherence and intelligent discussion flies right out of the window.

And yes, I know all about racism in the 1970s and 1980s - a lot of players were of the consensus this this kind of things was the norm.
Unfortunately, this is less-than-subtle in other continents and they have has far less exposure tom the multi-cultural existance of that in England.
(by the way, this shouldnt invalidate English football's anti-racist stance), but if any debate needs to had, objective debate, then, as I've pointed out before, it's a bit tricky using the moralistic holier-than-thou approach that the English tend to take.

There really is NO point in getitng 'pushy' with other nations and individuals with a moral high ground position of, "We're not racist, you are".