Jimmy_D

Out of interest, who benefits from this 30% death rate and the resulting massive drop in GDP?

He’s worth more than 50M to Saints at the moment, with no club likely to value him as highly he’ll likely stay.

JWP is worth more than that to Saints, we certainly wouldn’t be able to replace what he gives us for that. With four years left on his contract it’s unlikely his market value will match what his value is to Saints, unless Villa end up blowing a large portion of the Grealish money on him. After that the only way we lose him is if the player kicks up a fuss to force his way out. As long as it’s only Villa interested we’re unlikely to lose him that way either. As things stand I think he’ll stay here this season.

He isn’t going to go on strike for four years to force his way to an Aston Villa team selling their best player

£25M!? We should wait until they offer triple that just for thinking of making a offer that bad.

Have any sources for these ‘many people’? What is the division being created, as you see it? What should the response to racist abuse be, as you see it?

People being more aware of the problem now doesn’t mean the problem wasn’t there before.

As I understand, it was a group chat. The police are probably investigating whether an offence has been committed against any of the recipients of those messages. Doesn’t mean they’ll find there was, of course, but someone leaked those messages and I doubt it was any of those three.

See my post on the previous page.

So, far better to pretend it doesn’t exist, ignore it, and let them get on with being racist in peace?

See my post on the previous page for a fuller answer, but yes, I don’t see it creating division that wasn’t already there, but instead dragging it out to where it can be confronted.

Society is deciding that it’s something they want to change. If you don’t want it to be front page news I’m afraid you’re likely to be disappointed.

Well, racism certainly occurred, whether or not this particular case was racially motivated or not. Trying to make the entire argument about racist abuse focus on whether one particular instance was racist or not is just a distraction. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57848106 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57848761 Protests against that need some physical location to occur. It’s not surprising the mural was chosen for it consider the media focus on it the last few days.

The police will be investigating whether it was racially motivated because the context means it’s possible it was. They’ll most likely find there isn’t evidence to say it was, unless they catch the person that did it somehow and find they’ve got a history for it. I don’t get why that particularly matters though, it’s not like one incident of abuse not being racially motivated makes all the stuff that was racially motivated magically go away.

Changing most racists’ minds won’t come from a public message and awareness being raised, but if the people around them, their friends and family, have their awareness raised, and as a result are more willing to call them out on it instead of before ignoring it and remaining silent, that’s where a genuine difference can be made, for some people at least. Some it won’t change their views, but it will make them more unwilling to spread those views. Additionally, people growing up more than ever before are hearing racism being opposed. That makes a huge difference to young people that in the past would have heard racist views and everyone remain silent about it. It makes it matter to them. This one in particular will never stop being relevant. Lastly, being on the receiving end sucks. It’s felt hopeless and lonely for a long time, when it happens and they’ve seen people remain silent, or claim it’s not a problem, that we’ve already done enough. Seeing people actively make an effort to oppose racism and take it seriously makes a huge difference to that, regardless of what some racist trolls might think of it.

No, the evidence is easily found and widespread, as I know you’re well aware. If you think I’m personally going to contribute to spreading it further though, you’re going to be disappointed.

That’s because the news outlets that Google is finding are quite rightly reporting whats occurred without contributing to spreading it themselves. This has occurred all over social media. I’m not going to go looking for it for you.

So you’re quite happy to spend time searching for a picture of abuse of David Beckham from years ago but can’t figure out how to find anything from the last couple of days?

I’d imagine because it doesn’t imply that being black makes them worse at something, and there’s far less historic bias against white people that can be inferred by it. Doesn’t mean that it’s not a stupid chant, just that there’s less perception that it’s racially motivated.

It’s equally ignorant either way.

Like I said, you’re never going to change everyone’s opinion. None of all of this is aimed at changing their mind, it’s being done to oppose them.

I don’t think it’s about changing anyone’s mind, or at least not everyones, but more about giving future generations a choice and a chance to do better. People growing up with racist people in the past would grow up in a near vacuum, where the only opinion they heard would be unopposed and they’d have formed a mindset like that before they ever had a chance to figure it out themselves. It tended to be ignored rather than actively opposed. Now, at every turn people can see people with influence fighting back against it. That’s the reason ‘empty’ gestures like taking the knee should continue, because the opposing viewpoint needs to be there as constantly as the racists’. I think it’s actually making a difference. Look at the response to the Rashford mural. Would the vandalism have even been reported a few years ago? It certainly wouldn’t have been a main news item, and hundreds of people have come out and done something to counter it, instead of just ignoring it.

People might complain about our tactics, but we’ve just gone through an entire tournament conceding two goals and only lost in the final on penalties. One was a bullet of a free kick that probably shouldn’t have been a free kick in the first place, and the other came after an extremely unlucky ricochet off the post. That’s a bloody incredible platform to have a chance to win games. It’s gutting that it’s the final where it’s just come up short by the tiniest margin, but in my book Southgate has managed us brilliantly. In tournament football, where one loss literally ends it all, being difficult to beat is far more valuable than league football where a draw means dropping two points. Despite the claims of Italy having all the game, and us not doing anything to them, Italy didn’t really lay a glove on us either. For all their possession it didn’t feel like we were in much danger. Add in the number of fouls Italy had to commit to disrupt us, not to mention they were extremely lucky to keep 11 on the pitch, and in the end it just wasn’t our night. After a game that close it’ll always feel like we could have done something differently and got a different result.

The point I was making was just how finely balanced that final was. We really were incredibly incredibly close.

All pointless hindsight and speculation now, but can’t help but feel like we win that if Rashford turns his foot a fraction more and scores. Massively more pressure on the Italian penalties and far less pressure on ours.