egg

That's a good and interesting article, thanks. It says that only 1% of players in grass roots cricket are black (I'm unsure if the reference to "black" also extended to Asian and other non white groups). Does that stand as evidence of institutional racism? Or is the case that, for reasons unknown, black people in this country don't want to play cricket? Perhaps it's because there are no clubs near to where they live, but if that's down to geography, is that institutional racism or an unfortunate fact of life? What happened to Lawrence in 1981 was awful and sadly indicative of the era. It wouldn't happen now though. Indeed, Mark Butcher seemingly experienced no racism issues when he played in a later era. Sure, there is a lack of representation in coaching etc in cricket (and football although the England set up are trying very hard to address that with players like Ashley Cole and our Paul Williams suddenly getting big jobs) has always baffled me. Anyways, my point is that historical issues and a lack of opportunity does not equate to institutional racism now. Anyone can see that things have improved massively, but giving people jobs because they're black, assuming that football has a race problem because a few racists on twitter target footballers, assuming that cricket has a race issue because black people either choose not to play or don't have the access to facilities, calling people racists because they don't support the knee (despite naively believing that the players have chosen to do it), etc, etc, doesn't help. The simple fact is that racism exists, albeit to a lesser and hopefully reducing extent, but a person's ideology will not be eradicated by another person's naive hope that racists can be made to think like normal people by all of these actions.

Decent post, but this isn't player driven. Brentford players (many black, playing for a very diverse club) chose not to take the knee last season stating, and I paraphrase, that it's a load of bollox. They get promoted to the premier league and, what do you know, they're on their knees. Do you believe that they've had a sudden change of heart, or that its got something to do with promotion to the world's richest league and having to toe the line?

Ditto, and I think booing it is daft and classless as a minimum. Anyways, it's here to stay and we'll have the ongoing circus of boos, criticism, "debate", etc.

The divisions it's causing are obvious. The various threads on here highlight that. At its simplest, some people who support taking the knee consider the people that don't support it to be racists. Some people on both sides of the debate refuse to (or cannot) see the other side of the argument. It's divisive.

SOG, you again misunderstand and/or misrepresent what people have said. Nobody on this thread, or any other many similar ones, has a) criticised anyone for opposing racism or b) denied the existence of racism. Please read and understand. If you're going to join a serious discussion, please don't be disingenuous.

Ah, apologies. I thought it was a slight against Bale, my mistake 👍

Sorry, I'm not sure of the point you're making by linking the first paragraph to what Bale said?

We all see it differently. I've not been impressed with Perraud at all, KWP looks a better option to me. The other lad is 17 and although he could be another Livramento, he could be another Vokins. To get our best players on the pitch at the same time, there is always at least one playing out of his natural position or the one we signed him to play - Livramento at RM, KWP at LB, S Armstrong at LM. That's a fact with our squad. As an aside, discussion is pointless when people criticise someone else's opinion because it suggests playing someone out of position / not where we signed him to play, but in the same breath argue the same for another player.

Sure its a squad game, but every team has a best XI and for me that has Tino as our first pic RB. There's no need to meddle with that. It's what we do with our other squad players. Our best RM is S Armstrong and I'm sure he'll play there when fit. Assuming that's correct, we have KWP and Perraud - only one can play LB and although it's early days, KWP looks the better option to me.

Yep, that's an option, but S Armstrong at LM is as much a square peg in a round hole as KWP at LB. My focus in options 1 and 2 were the players I mentioned just over those 3 positions. For me, you play your best players, and I rate S Armstrong a better player than Perraud, and to be honest, KWP may be a better LB than Perraud anyway.

Gets my vote.

Ha!! Dropping S Armstrong. Bless.

Behave. Livramento was bought as a RB, talking of playing him elsewhere after 3 games, and playing him on the right ahead of S Armstrong, is ridiculous. Perraud has looked like a fish up a tree, and quite rightly was dropped. If the choice is: 1. Livramento RB, KWP LB, S Armstrong RM, and Perraud bench or 2. KWP RB, Perraud LB, Livramento RM and S Armstrong bench Then it's option 1 all day long for me

I get that, but for me, Stuart Armstrong on the right is our best option there which means Livramento RB, and KWP at LB.

Yep. I don't get all this Romero stuff. He's 34, hasn't played much, and will be on monster wages. Someone like Sam Johnstone is much more like it. Decent, experienced, and has years ahead of him. That Ralph alternated his keepers last year told us what he thinks of them, and as soon as we ditch Forster we'll be on the market.

Ditto. Although Bertrand was done here, I'm far from convinced about Perraud. He struggled in his first 2 games, and was rightly dropped for KWP.

That's a poor point. Kane and Shaw were given grief because they played for England. Black players suffered racist monkey chants because they were black. Don't be conflating the two issues.

So we played well, Sterling wound them up, there may have made some monkey chants from a section of the crowd, and the knee booing is again deemed racist. Got it. The highlights are now on ITV game so I'll check it out. Cheers 👍

Tiny

I didn't see the game and popped on this thread. Completely dominated by the racist / not racist bollox we've had time and time again. If sections of the crowd are making monkey chants, sections of the crowd are racist - it's pretty fucking obvious. I've no idea how we played though, sadly.

Shame to see that you've reverted to troll mode. But yep, expecting an established international player to join and sit on the bench, is unrealistic. He'd have wanted assurances that he'd play and I don't think he'd have got in ahead of Romeu.

Innings

Yep, everyone says "get him in" but they forget he's got to want to come here. He's an established international and I can't imagine that he'd want to come and sit on our bench getting the odd cup game here and there.

I suspect he's on massive wages. Good player though.

In truth we don't know what we've received or spent. It may be that the wage savings gave us wriggle room. Personally, I think we needed a DM and not getting one has left is short.