Kenny Dalglish Won't Be Delivering the Module: English Premiership 2011-12

My default position is 'Chris we cool and I see where you are coming from, but jesus Liverpool need to sort their shit out, this
is getting ridiculous. The line shouldn't even be blurry, especially after months of potential incidents.'

Ryan Giggs refused leave to appeal for damages against The Sun following article about an alleged affair with Imogen Thomas.

Think the bigger drudge siren is that Diaby is available to get injured against Liverpool.

after 72 years, still turning up to save the day at squeaky bum time

Think the bigger drudge siren is that Diaby is available to get injured against Liverpool.

― James Mitchell, Friday, 2 March 2012 10:13 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol really????

Apparently he has regained that little extra two percent of fitness.

A Diaby/Gervinho hybrid would be pretty useful imo.

someone who is injured all the time, can't defend and has no final ball?

He'd keep the place tidy, that sort of thing.

could cover any position for ye imo

i'm thinking of a player who surges forward, keeps the ball under control but actually does something with it when he's in a decent position. natural selection being about advantage traits y'know

xps darragh otm, nice post.

(I wouldn't say it ever looked like you (or chris) were representing the monolith btw, it's just that sometimes when the rhetoric gets cranked up that's all you can hear. Doesn't make the spirit of enquiry wrong, but I guess yeah, maybe you've got to pick your time to do it.)

half-tempted to revisit keysey with the benefit of time/distance tbh

i miss zvookster fwiw, i really hate falling out with ilxors.

I always try (i'm sure everyone thinks this) to keep the person i'm arguing with distinct from the argument they're making, even on emotive topics. There are many different reasons to discuss and wonder out loud on such topics, and many of these reasons are good, valuable and important.

I try to take it as an article of faith that when i'm at odds with an ilxor with whom i've previously interacted over months or years without their being outed as anything other than a normal (hey, at worst) and likeable person that they are entitled to a certain level of- i dunno, maybe trust?- that even on ilx-unfriendly topics such as racism, sexism, class, politics, dissenters from (usually very entrenched and inflexible imo) ilx standard positions aren't necessarily arguing for a return to the mid 80's in stoke, krystallnacht, the middle-ages, whatever.

what happened to zv?

sorry, i'd have posted that to another thread if i'd known it would get that long

Kick discussions out of football

or at least make ilf threads i'll initially bookmark and never read about them

i like the fact that ppl on ilx get instantly called out for posting stuff perceived as sexist, racist, etc. it makes a nice change from literally every other site on the internet where that stuff passes without comment. if innocent posters get caught in the crossfire that's unfortunate but i think the happy family that is ILF can work through these difficulties. together as one.

and, y'know, i agree with that too!

Worth noting that onimo, ailsa, tom and jim are noteworthy ilf hardman tacklers on such issues, is this a caledonian thing?

My own view: footballers fighting about alleged racist comments is not very serious compared to real 'racial inequality' eg the fact that the average black person in the UK is probably poorer than the average white person in the UK, is probably less likely to get a good job, good qualifications; the average cleaner in the UK is likely to be non-white; etc (guessing at these facts)

these are, one might argue, sad or troubling things

people, media etc like picking endlessly over what a millionaire footballer said or didn't say to another millionaire footballer in the heat of a match

they don't like really talking about the inequality mentioned above, perhaps because it is not popular to talk seriously about socio-economic inequality, class etc; or perhaps because it's harder or more boring than talking about footballers

I think football / racism 'debates' are mostly a distraction from this reality, and do not illuminate it much or at all.

If you put it that way then football itself is a distraction from this reality.

yes, i can see that, pf, but then i suppose that the fact that these subjects coming up as football issues have a certain cachet beyond the limited importance of the incidents themselves- access to maybe a group that would not generally (through choice or social habit or w/e) think to discuss or consider the facets of racism, implications of intent or perception, cultural clash as opposed to 'two blokes and handbags', what have you- you're not going to get the majority of football fans to think about mean earnings by ethnicity, but you can, i suppose, force the issue to the front of football dialogue.

Football is, probably, a distraction from other aspects of reality - but it's (up to a point) a welcome one, something that we like. So that's OK.

Whereas millionaires squabbling is not welcome or fun or good entertainment - and the debate about it pretends to be a debate about unpleasant realities, where actually, I suggest, it is a veneer and a way of not talking about them.

I take DM's point, though. But I think racism is most significant not as 'cultural clash' or even one individual abusing another, unpleasant though that may be, but as very deep-lying inequalities of income and opportunity, and that's what no one in or around football seems able to contemplate.

it can't be right that reams of text, time, money, effort are put into finding out (or even failing to find out) what one obnoxious millionaire said to another -- and this is presented as a righteous and virtuous thing to do cos it's about racism -- when the same people doing it or paying attention to it (including, up to a point, me) don't want to put similar efforts and resources into investigating real ethnic inequality that affects millions of lives

it's clearly a sideshow, and not really a very interesting or edifying or fun one

reina ad was not very racist as far as racism goes really. homophobia for the sake of a pun was probably poor judgement.

sorry joining in pretty late

What's the alternative? Ignore it and let the obnoxious millionaires just carry on? What sort of signal does that send against the backdrop of wider societal racism?

I also don't really hold with the idea that people commenting on it have no interest in wider inequalities or in doing anything about them. But if you're involved in the governance of football it's within your remit to do something about it and if you can you should.

i take what you're saying to a point, pf, but wd argue that the fact that wealthy people can also be the victim of racism doesn't mean that there's a hierarchy in which inequalities of wealth somehow trump inequalities of race (or gender or sexuality or etc). the inequalities form a complex web, and whilst not much is served by us at a distance arguing about the finer points of whether somebody's behaviour is racist or not, what we're really discussing is much closer to home and all of our lives - the society we live in and that we want to construct, i guess.

btw John Terry is a cunt

oh yeah meant to say

he is.

Also if you're a racially abused obnoxious millionaire footballer you are probably much more likely to be abused in the street, singled out, sent death threats etc etc. Obviously you're more likely to be able to afford security and a nice big house to hide out in but I doubt any of that is much fun in the first place.

i have wondered when the suarez/evra thing was going on how many people would read the papers and come to the conclusion "cor them south americans are a bunch of racists aren't they?"

they lack our british sense of fair play

xps, Absolutely true that there's a battle going on over pay and other things that this doesn't touch upon but there's also a battle over not getting racist stuff shouted at you in the name of "banter" that has a pretty direct bearing on the lives of most people from minority groups in this country. Someone high-profile getting taken to task for not policing their own vile behaviour may make potential offenders think twice about doing it and future victims more confident in feeling like they don't have to just shrug it off.

xp, Terry coming so close afterwards might have lessened that impact, tbh.

yeah i know sorry have you seen my "moaning about hiding everything behind humour" thread?

oh right sorry i see what you meant

i think the Terry case might've drained some of the drama out of Suarez/Evra

and the stuart pearce/paul ince incident of 17 years ago.

NV is that humour thread easy to get in (as opposed to a clusterfuck)? I just read the Stewart Lee book where he took apart his own stand-up routine and think I have a bit to add... but you see a thread get 300 posts within a day and think 'ah fuck it, no need to get in the middle of whiney v. deej pt 74'

it turned into 'other ppl's humour is horrible' for a while

It isn't really clusterfucky at all, it's mostly either fairly considered or people thrashing out their ideas in their own minds. Good thread.

spurs will beat utd with a 451 this weekend, players being fit. Two goals or more.

sandro vs parker

sandro would win with his deadly karate kicks. parker has already shown he's vunerable to such an attack

at half time last week i'd have been happy enough tbh, but.....

isn't parker suspended?

yeah

sandro is 'a better player, fw/eiw

not as currently applied to spurs 451, but i think with a run in the team he'd be fit for a top three team alright.

Re: the whole suarez racism thing. This is going to sound cynical, 'cause it partially is but were I Dalglish, I would have told Suarez immediately to issue some boilerplate apology and get on with the season. The FA would have been more lenient, the team wouldn't have gotten needlesly distracted and frankly, the last game I saw Suarez in, he wasn't really all that. This isn't to condone racism, but if you really, really 'bleed red', stfu up and concentrate on the team and the game. The whole wind-up game should only be played by the manager and even then, most managers aren't very good at it.

they won the carling cup though?