Ex Lion Tamer

The point is that they are spending more than us, so they can afford to keep players like Grealish (for longer, at least). It really is that simple

They probably will be, as ambitious people who want to do a great job, but they may equally reflect that White simply didn't show enough to justify keeping him on, and they couldn't have known how he would kick on. Indeed no other Premier League team saw fit to take him on at that time

Is it possible to get every academy decision right? Seems like quite a high bar and I'm sure every club makes mistakes

I just disagree that policing racism is inevitably the thin end of the wedge. It is perfectly possible to draft a sensible law on online hate in the UK without turning us into China. We live in a democracy for a start, which acts as some protection from that sort of abuse of power. We already police child pornography online, so it's not like the internet is totally free anyway. We can make sensible laws on online behaviour just like in any other aspect of society. What we should be worried about is the government's plans to clamp down on peaceful protest - now that really is authoritarian

All laws are based on what a portion of voters think. You never have absolute consensus

Reasonable people can be complicit in turning a blind eye to abuse. If they realise the extent of the problem and demand action then the government feels obliged to do something. Johnson has already said he wants to ban racists from football stadiums, doesn't that vindicate the campaigners?

When you say policy, you mean Matt Crocker said it in an interview once?

Whataboutery of the highest order. Stopping racism doesn't have any disbenefits to other people like these examples (arguably) do. Being outright offensive to people isn't tolerated in society; it's not a freedom of speech issue. We already have laws against inciting racial hatred and racial hate crimes

It makes some numpties upset but it also makes reasonable people think about the issue and how they and society could improve

But if we don't talk about race then a problem like this won't get addressed

It's what all the media do to whip people up and get clicks. It's not done as part of some woke agenda. It was the same when they all said that Fawlty Towers was being banned, which got all the right wingers foaming and wasn't actually true

If we only ever went on clubs' opening asking prices then we'd either never buy any players or we'd pay a lot more money than we needed to

If he's covering both sides then this player is going to play plenty of games. We need someone good, not just a backup to sit on the bench. £2m may be too much for Williams but we have to look for another quality first-teamer

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jul/14/portsmouth-investigate-racist-posts-allegedly-sent-by-academy-players-under-18s-england

Facebook and Twitter have been working pretty hard to delete racist content, so those on here who simply won't believe black people when they say there's a problem aren't going to get the scale of irrefutable evidence they're insisting on

https://theconversation.com/how-racist-is-britain-today-what-the-evidence-tells-us-141657

I guess they're trying to deny people the attention they're looking for. Condemn in broad terms but don't share the actual content, which is after all offensive to many people

If you think back 50 years or 100 years, we've come so far on things like racism and homophobia. There's no reason to think we can't keep improving, but it takes education and people standing up for what's right

So if footballers were being targeted by thieves every day and they wanted to protest against it with a coordinated gesture before each game, would you be against that?

Perhaps I'm misreading you but are you seriously saying that our society knew racism was wrong even when we were a global leader in slavery?

So we should all just be quiet about racism and it will go away? You might provoke some attention-seeking numpties in the short term but the only way you change people's attitudes in the long term is to speak out and set a clear example

I'm not sure it helps the players to prepare mentally though if they don't know when they're taking a penalty and the order could change at any time

They'll have practiced a lot in training and know inside out who the best penalty takers are. Your proposal is that in the final, right before the shoot out, Southgate should tell Saka: "Sorry, you're only 19 so I don't think you're up to taking a penalty, even though you've proven in training that you're one of the top five pen takers on the pitch". That's going to be great for the lad's confidence, especially if he then has to go up later in the shootout. Then you've also got pressure on the player taking his place because they're having to step up even though they're not as skilled at pens. 19 isn't automatically too young to take a penalty. Owen or Rooney, for example, would have stuck it away (or maybe missed, as any player sometimes does). Everyone wants someone to blame for England losing but picking the best players to take the penalties is actually very sensible. They just missed.

Not aiming this specifically at you but Southgate has made brave decisions all through the tournament and it's massively been to our benefit. Yet a couple of decisions don't come off in the final, despite being pretty sound on paper, and people decide to leap on that.

23 in 28. Nice