Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

Anyone can employ him, whether it is sensible or right to do so is a different matter.

tbf Pulis has committed assault at work himself with apparent impunity

Some game this, penalty qpr

It wasnt sensible or right to hire steve bruce neither.

Missed, inevitably

i agree that the more Sunderland and di Canio entrench on this and offer disingenuous non-apologies, the uglier it gets, like the balls Liverpool made of the Suarez affair

Fulham to score within three minutes now

No! QPR score!

even put it in off the underside of the bar for added drama

the best other-side-of-the-story I've seen re PDC is this article http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/paolo-di-canio-my-life-speaks-for-me-6273526.html , e.g. the fuller statement on Mussolini:

"I am fascinated by Mussolini," Di Canio wrote. "I think he was a deeply misunderstood individual. He deceived people. His actions were often vile. But all this was motivated by a higher purpose. He was basically a very principled individual. Yet he turned against his sense of right and wrong. He compromised his ethics."

which all obviously isn't enough to fill all the gaps in his mysterious non-racist fascism and excuse him because the gaps are presumably ultimately unfillable, but it's more than the wishy washy Sunderland statement.

Yes, it's interesting.

It all reminds me of Ezra Pound.

PDC isn't a fan of Mussolini he probably just likes hanging around Essos

Ezra was anti-semitic as fuck tho tbf

so you'd say he's better than Ezra

EP was anti-semitic, yes, and a supporter of Mussolini.
But he is still (now) taken seriously.

harsh red

Classic footy moment where the sub, Emanuelson, himself gets subbed off after half-an-hour. Is he actually terrible? He had such a weird game, like he'd got his shoes on the wrong way round or something.

it's possible to take EP's work seriously at a distance from the man whilst hating what he stood for - he was essentially self-employed for his entire life. it's another thing to say that publicly stated opinions are irrelevant when somebody is an employee in a multiracial society. on a pragmatic level and an ethical level they're not.

Oh, what was the red for? I missed it, was getting some guacamole.

Sidwell mis-control and lunge. No way it was worthy of a straight red

PDC's only statement about race appears to be that he is not racist.
I don't know whether this is true or whether he really knows. etc etc.

I think that there are opinions which are more dangerous to us now than qualified admiration of Mussolini. Suppose a football manager has called for the privatization of the NHS and education system, praised corporate culture and union bashing and supported a nuclear attack on Iran by Israel. I find these things truly odious, dangerous and scary. But I'm not sure that he should be obliged to defend them because he takes a job in football. He is, I suppose, entitled to those views.

Guacamole sandwich brigade ?

I meant mushy peas

I love mushy peas and have a tin of them in my cupboard!

fan groups starting to put pressure on Sunderland, the Durham Miners' Association has asked the club to return a banner displayed at the ground. for better or worse this is going to blow a bit stronger yet before it blows over.

http://i.imgur.com/j8XO6PI.gif

http://i.imgur.com/7ZuJ3kX.jpg

Sidwell mis-control and lunge. No way it was worthy of a straight red

― Number None, Monday, 1 April 2013 20:43 (1 hour ago)

totally disagree, was obviously and instantly a red to my friend and i

that berbatov moment was bergkamp-on-acid shit, man

fan groups starting to put pressure on Sunderland, the Durham Miners' Association has asked the club to return a banner displayed at the ground

Something grimly comic about this, were there not a bigger thing at stake here. Why are there faces blocked out in that photo?

I also feel uncomfortable with the aspect that it is OK for someone who might be defending Fascism being in charge of a League One club, but as soon as they take charge of one in the Premier League then it is suddenly a problem.

True!

That picture is very unpleasant (and Berbatov fab).

Some very odd things about this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/01/sunderlands-own-goal-paolo-di-canio

Not least

In any case, fascism vigorously opposes the representative democracy that works to safeguard the interests of different groups and ideas. In that sense, at the very least, it's antithetical to a 21st-century football league that brings together many different organisations, each of which in turn increasingly depends on multicultural teams.

'many different organisations' ?!?

Are ye still on about this?

guaranteed that everyone itt understands more about 'fascism' and has now considered dicanio's stance on it more than the man himself ever has- even if it wasnt a total irrelevancy to his hiring by sunderland!

I wonder if there's a far-right move in Italy to co-opt the basically far-left workerist, autonomist etc tendencies of the working classes into a supposedly non-racist pure original fascism? Let's get Di Canio reading some Tronti and see what happens.

once punters start picketing your employer the things you say and do become very relevant. applies to most fields of employment. is that fair? well if you're daft enough to piss off enough customers then i guess you get what you get. there's plenty of other nuances to this but those are the realities.

do you think so? Do you think there'll be enough? Vast majority wont give two fucks imo

once there's a media circus, once politicians and TV pundits and the like start putting their tuppence-worth in, once the commercial director starts to get the wind up all sorts of crazy shit can happen. if he lasts the week then he'll probably get away with it but i don't think that's a lock at the moment.

but he's got to walk into a workplace with a whole group of people of different races and cultures and say "about these pictures of me giving it the Nazi salute..." some people might think that wd make your job difficult

Its a media storm for the media. Footballers played for him at swindon, the fans clapped when he won. The way he holds his arms in pictures will bubble up now and again im sure, doubt it'll provoke anything more concrete than groups and individuals running to the same media outlets to say "we dont think he should hold his arms like this", it'll be edifying stuff tbs

this has all been pretty stupid. not that i'm in any way an apologist for fascism but let him get the fuck on with it, judge him on what he is, says and produces now, not then

Gervinho was throwing out the salutes like a mad thing on the weekend and you didn't hear a sniff about it. Double standards imo

Mark Bosnich did some straight arm salutes to Spurs fans iirc

would be nice if chris powell could put in a good word for him - given the historical (lol, 1998) friendship between cafc and sfc this might be a shrewd move

Yeah. I dunno what dicanio is, or believes, nor does anyone, doubt he's a stabber, doubt he orders stabbings, full sure he wasn't active in ww2 so if the charge is 'came from a background of lamentable alignment with the politics and ideals of a political movement now discredited' then fuckin right lol milliband, if the charge is 'aligns with actual practicing thugs' then more than he would want up on the charge in english football, if the charge is 'but you cant do the symbol with the thingy' the charge is a social question and id say, for all lip service, your punter has as much problem with fascism and associated behaviours as he does with racism, homophobia, idk speeding fines, getting tattoos, walking on the grass- yknow all that other shit that football players, managers, fans, pundits try not to get caught doing but is still somehow out there being done by lots of em.

i have a soft spot for di Canio and agree that most of what he's said/done has probably been more crass than malicious but i think it's pretty clear that pro football is quite capable of ignoring racism unless it's forced to acknowledge it. what we say in public does impact on our professional lives and it's easy for me as a white man to fail to see any serious offence in his philosophical meanderings. i've never had to work with someone who's espoused ideas close to implying that they consider me an inferior species so i don't know how that wd feel.

i am pretty sure that if i was in the local paper campaigning for the BNP then my boss wd probably quite rightly want to have a word with me about our equality and diversity policy.

I'll ask my local hr expert about whether he'd be wise to do that and get back to you.

In any case, fascism vigorously opposes the representative democracy that works to safeguard the interests of different groups and ideas.

Thank goodness for representative democracy, right kids?

I mostly agree with the pinefox re Di Canio but he lost me at "good-but-never-quite-great footballer" because imo there's never been a better footballer to have in a one-on-one with a keeper than Paolo.

Seems legitimate to hold football people to a higher standard re: far-right affiliations given the sport's ongoing struggle with racism and thuggery cloaked in fascist politics. Could Sunderland assert any moral authority in banning fans giving fascist salutes to black players? idk. It's largely in PdC's hands now, i think. If he can satisfy people that his past actions were a mistake and not representative of his current views (while remembering the names of his black players and not just referring to them as "hey, black") then i'm sure he'll be fine. The statement doesn't really go far enough for me.

i have a soft spot for di Canio and agree that most of what he's said/done has probably been more crass than malicious but i think it's pretty clear that pro football is quite capable of ignoring racism unless it's forced to acknowledge it. what we say in public does impact on our professional lives and it's easy for me as a white man to fail to see any serious offence in his philosophical meanderings. i've never had to work with someone who's espoused ideas close to implying that they consider me an inferior species so i don't know how that wd feel.

This is basically OTM, although I'd substitute "work with" for "work for". The question of whether or not PDC, given all this baggage, is remotely the best person to motivate a squad in freefall and threatened with relegation is all tied up in this as well. This stuff is usually handwaved away with "the players won't be bothered about all that" and maybe that's true.

Still kinda hoping for some kind of epic disaster whereby Sunderland lose all their remaining games in a ridiculous fashion and go straight down and no club touches Di Canio again. Sunderland have not exactly been renowned for inspired managerial appointments in the past.

Has any manager ever come in in April and saved a club from relegation?