Lighthouse

If Lingard had been putting in such consistently mediocre performances for a club which wasn’t Man Utd, would you want to sign him?

Would you be saying this if he’d been putting regular, similar performances for Newcastle or Palace?

So you’ve ruled out a pre-match tsunami which moves the shattered remains of the Amex halfway to Gatwick. How very presumptuous.

It has already been highlighted though, decades ago. Nobody needs telling that racism exists to an extent, this isn’t new information. Being exposed to new information is obviously good but that’s not happening with the kneeling. I agree with Les Ferdinand, it’s become a gimmick and a distraction, which is distracting everyone from meaningful discussion. This is what’s happening now, rather than discussing any actual racial issues, we’re discussing the booing of a gesture. The whole debate has become vacuous and asinine. To have meaningful dialogue, you have to have open minded people willing to listen on both sides of the debate. That includes both the Millwall fans and people like Dion Dublin. You can’t stick your fingers in your ears and say, "there’s no problem," nor can you stick your fingers in your ears and say, "well if they don’t like it I can only assume they must be racist." I’m willing to listen but right now there is so little of any sense or value being said. All that being said and despite what many will say, I honestly believe we’re one of the most tolerant, multicultural societies in the world. I’m struggling to think of many places in the world where so many different races, cultures and nationalities live together in such relative harmony as London.

The purpose of a gesture is to raise awareness of an issue. If there was some ethnic minority in Dorset we'd never heard of, who's land and wealth was being taken away and given to white people, for example; that would be an appropriate use of a gesture. Nothing is being buried, the root causes are simply not being discussed at all. All we are doing really is shouting, "racism exists!" repeated and expecting something to change. We're like the Underpants Gnomes on South Park, for anyone who gets that reference. Take stop and search as a good example. Many people feel people of colour are unfairly targeted, which may well be true but simply shouting, "it's not fair!" Will never change anything. You have to get to the route cause; which has a lot to do with the appalling stabbing statistics in urban areas. That wont change until we can get kids in these areas to stay in schools and out of gangs, which is a lot easier said than done. Kick it Out is/was as effective as any stand alone slogan can be, without ever actually troubling the causes of the problems.

I can’t wait for the childish, petulant speech he’s going to give on Jan 20th, if he bothers to turn up at all.

I doubt anyone on here would argue against the view that a large number of Wall fans are a bit thick, so we can take that as a given. The issue here is the motivation for this anger. To me it seems obvious; they’ve seen the violence in USA and London, which BLM have been far from an innocent party in, the defacing of war memorials and Churchill statues etc. and are put out by the fact that all their players are forced to kneel for this movement. I know it was a minority who were responsible for the vandalism and violence but you try telling them that. It is much simpler however to simply write this issue off as racial hatred because that’s what people want to see. They want a bogey man to fight against, so any lazy assumption will do.

Sadly, I don’t think it has opened up much debate, simply made it more polarised. You only have to read some of the insults flying around to see that there’s very little listening going on from either side. Kick it Out has had limited impact because it’s just a slogan and I’m not sure why anyone expect shouting ‘black lives matter’ and kneeling to be any different. All it is is a gesture, nothing more. It doesn’t solve any problems, it doesn’t impart any knowledge on society. Basically what it comes down to is trying to solve crimes with sound bites. In that regard, it’s about as effective as wearing a T-shirt saying, "no more paedos," or taking the knee to ‘raise awareness’ of murder. Whenever someone mentions raising awareness of racism I think, ‘wow really, you think the issue is simply that people aren’t aware of it as a concept?’

Clearly there are a number of idiots in both groups of people. Nothing that went on in London over summer was particularly pleasant, not least because of the massive Covid spread it helped to achieve. The EDL, hooligan types, as Sheaf said, certainly were not the ‘good guys’ and are no heroes of mine. For me this is why it’s perplexing for the anti-racism movement to persist with the BLM slogan. It’s a bit like me launching a campaign for everyone to get vaccinated ASAP and going with the slogan, "Britain First". Why go for that ambiguity, why not disassociate yourself from a movement which you know to be unpopular?

What. A. F**king. Goal.

Should have taken a red for the team there, wipe him out and save the draw.

I doubt their fans have ever not been worried, since the moment they got promoted. It’s going to be a long season for that bottom four.

Sam Harris basically puts the situation across as I see it.

I wouldn't say that so much as the fact that there's only so much a slogan and a logo can really achieve. Their place and purpose is to raise awareness of an issue; for someone in the 21st century to say they're unaware of the issue of racism is laughable.

The media and the various football pundits are clearly well out of touch with the view of a lot of the public. You only have to look at the news stories on social media and a lot of the comments are against either the BLM organisation or the compulsory virtue signalling of kneeling. Yet every live game I watch starts with whichever commentator solemnly telling the viewers, "as ever we take the knee to send out such a powerful statement of unity." The problem people like Dublin have is that they seem to have suspended critical thinking. We’ve got to a point in society where a lot of people think they can’t be wrong and that if someone disagrees with them, they must be the victim of an -ism or a -phobia. There’s no willingness to listen to the other side anymore, just the Maginot Line of, "I’m offended," for egos to hide behind. If Dion assumes racism and stops there then this won’t be the last time and he will go to his grave thinking the world is an awful, racist place. Having said that, I’ve no doubt that a large number of Millwall fans are absolute helmets.

If BLM kneeling was an optional choice once a season, I doubt anyone would be too upset about it. Likewise if we had a poppy and a minutes silence for every game, fans would soon get fed up.

Our players are perfectly capable of that without our help.

We all know Millwall fans aren't exactly the type to leave a game early to get to the ballet. Yes, most of them are probably obnoxious bell ends and booing isn't pleasant or helpful but that doesn't necessarily dictate their motives.

All this incident signifies to me is that BLM's strategy has been wrong all along and is having the opposite effect to what they were rather naively hoping for. You can't simply patronise people into agreeing with you, on any subject. It wont change any attitudes, you will just bore the average Joes with tedium to the point that they actually start to resent you. What I find doubly irritating is how easy and quick it is to do. If a player was volunteering his spare time at a local youth centre, to help kids from different ethnic backgrounds get involved in their community, stay out of gangs and in schools etc. THEN I could tolerate him talking to me in condescending tones. Short of actual liking that kind of attitude, I could at least appreciate that he had done something worthwhile and put his money where his mouth is. What I can't stand is people who put a black fist on their Twitter handle, kneel down from time to time, then lecture the rest of us as if they've made some seismic social impact that Dr King would be in awe of.

Hallerious.

As he said, the gesture. Some people don't like compulsory virtue signalling. C*ntish though many 'wall fans doubtless are, this doesn't make them racist in itself.

You’re just pissed off that it’s not a suppository.

Three people have just explained to you and you ignore them. This doesn’t require an hour long consult with a vascular oncologist. Retired doctors, nurses, radiographers, army medics, vets, student medics, heroin addicts... What do you think is a bigger drain on the NHS - Gav from the paratroop regiment sticking a syringe in someone’s tricep for 10 seconds or three weeks hooked up to an iron lung in ICU, being pumped full of steroids by doctors and nurses, who have to run out and change their PPE every 20 minutes?

F**k it, give me one of these and I’ll do 975 a week by myself.

Why this defeatist attitude? I can understand people having doubts over what they’re being injected with, even if it’s by far the lesser of the two evils but this is clinging at logistical straws. The best medical brains in the world have been working flat out to develop, test and approve a vaccine with a near miraculous success rate and you’re complaining about fridge space and volunteer nurses. For the record, my mother is a retired radiographer and was recently asked by the NHS to be re-admitted to their register, in case extra staff were needed short term. These are exactly the kinds of people who can be readily asked and trained to administer a simple jab in a school sports hall, community hall or similar.