verlaine1979

Brilliant signing. Schneiderlin & Cork should be an excellent combination.

I wonder why Man U want him when they've got Ravel Morrison who is around the same age, same position, and looks every bit as good (if not better)?

Yes, great player.

Yes, unfortunately the idea of young black men being 'uppity' does have very strong racist overtones - see the furore in 2008 caused by a Georgia congressman when he described then candidate Obama in those terms. It's very simple - Jason Puncheon clearly felt himself to be sufficiently talented to deserve a shot at playing in the premier league, he presumably (since none of us know) pursued that through generally accepted channels, and ultimately won the opportunity to play at a higher level. Then, in holding down a regular position & scoring goals in that Premier League team, he rather proved his point. I'm sorry, but wanting the best for yourself, pursuing it, and proving that you were right doesn't make you a 'billy big balls' or uppity or anything else; and unfortunately, within memory, this particular contour of argument seems to emerge most strongly when a non-white player is involved. Puncheon may, personally, be a deeply unpleasant individual. I have no idea, having never met him. My problem is with the generic criticism and broad brush-strokes of the language on here; they're the product of lazy thinking, and lazy thinking tends to be regressive. And unfortunately you don't have to regress too far into our history for racism to switch from covert to overt. Oh, and between you and me, I find the argument that racial sensitivity is racist in and of itself, both illogical and self-serving.

I'm going to use my last post of the day to point out the irony in your rebuttal of racist undertones essentially boiling down to calling Puncheon uppity. Well played, Sir, well played...

As I stated way, way up-stream in this thread, I actually agree with you. I think your argument is more nuanced that most people on here are giving you credit for. This isn't a simple dichotomy; it's not a question that all black players will be derided and all white players adored. The idea is simply that for various deep-seated cultural reasons, non-white players are perhaps not giving the benefit of the doubt quite as readily as white players are. You only have to look at the language in question to see it is a continuation of a particular thread of racial stereotyping that has existed since the 17th century (laziness, fecklessness, unreliability etc etc). You don't have to consciously be a bigot for these currents to have effect. As a specific example, if you contrast the language used to denigrate a player like Pulis, he's decribed as "sh*t" or some other abstracted fecal derogation. Puncheon on the other hand seems excessively likely to be criticised with language that, dare I say it, seems designed to remind him that he's forgotten his place? The language people use reveals a great deal about their unconscious prejudices. I'm still waiting for the canard of 'naive' African defending to die out from modern commentary, so to suggest that everything is (ahem) now lilly-white in terms of football's attitude to race, is utterly absurd.

Yeah, I've never been entirely comfortable with the frequency with which labels such as 'lazy', 'unreliable', 'arrogant', 'bad attitude' get hung around the necks of non-white players. There's too long a history of this kind of insidious (albeit in places perhaps unthinking) stereotyping for it to be allowed to pass entirely unacknowledged. Not saying it's necessarily the case here, but I believe it is unavoidably the case that you have to think doubly hard before throwing those kind of terms around if you don't want to just end up contributing to the reinforcement of an entirely pernicious history.

Pleasure

I see you're as trenchant in your analysis of football as you are stylish with your prose. Without his very well executed back-heel under pressure from a couple of defenders, there would have been no unopposed cross, and thus no tap-in. I've no doubt at all that he's a disruptive influence and lacks the requisite quality to be a sustained influence in games week in week out. However, from someone who watched the game today and can thus speak from the pedestal of, y'know, actual experience, he was one of their better players.

He was actually instrumental in setting up their second goal. Nice back-heel to feed the eventual cross that got turned in.

Bridge has been rubbish for years now. He looks nervous on the ball, and has done since at least 2009 when he joined Man City, and probably before then.

Great goal.

Passing really sloppy so far.

Courmayeur is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been - lovely.

Heh, no it was because he apparently saw 'the value in taking the brand global'. Whichever pompey fan put together the whole Paul Allen scam showed an unusual degree of literacy and imagination. Kudos.

Completely agree, has always looked a deeply limited player to me. He was embarrassingly poor on his England debut against France. Typical English lump of a striker, no touch, no skill.

Chaplow was fantastic, even without the goal he'd have been MoM. Utter bargain.

Hmmm, so we have 21 games left and B'mouth have 20 and we need to make up 2 points on them over the course of the remaining games. At the points per game rate indicated there, the differential between our rest of season totals would be more than 4 points in our favour.

Unpacking the real meanings behind the euphemistic language of football fans is a dangerous game.

Any news on whether Gael N'Lundulu made much of an impression during his trial last week? Noticed he wasn't in the development squad against Oxford, so presumably trial over.

His first touch looks extremely good from the videos.

Sure, but a club whose home-grown talent is visibly unsettled (even possibly going on strike in protest) at being refused a transfer to a club that is already arguably world class, would also portray us in a less than positive light.

So, hypothetically, you'd rather stick with a club with ambitions to become the next Barcelona, than actually join Barcelona? I wouldn't dream of knocking our ambitions, but I think we've got a long road before we become the next Bolton, let alone the next Barcelona - certainly that goal is a long way advanced beyond the careers of anyone currently in the first team, and more than likely anyone in the youth squad either (barring a sudden change in policy from the owners that sees us drop several hundred million on players in season or two). Any Saints player already 'convinced' that they are playing for the next Barcelona is, unfortunately, unlikely to be in full command of their faculties, surely?

I don't mean to appear overly picky, but weren't we world beaters for 5 weeks, and then egg beaters for two (if you count a draw against the league's other form team as 'egg beater' standard that is).

This is an utterly unrealistic proposition. I can't think of a single instance of a team's best player having a non-first team counterpart of equivalent quality just sitting on the bench. When teams lose their best player for whatever reason, they struggle to replace them and often their performance drops - this is as true of Real Madrid as it is of Southampton.