2011/2012 English Premier League thread

[d_phaneuf]

Suarez admitted to saying the word...

which in Europe is an extremely racist word, and he has been in Europe for I believe 5 years now so the ignorance excuse doesn't work

[Bagor]

Liverpool at their most entertaining!

Highlight for me was that it turns out that Daglish played a role in contradicting and screwing over Suarez.

[304]If that is correct, it would suggest that Mr Dalglish understood Mr Suarez's comment to be in the nature of retaliation for having been called "South American". But that would suggest that the riposte "You are black" was used in a derogatory sense, which is contrary to Mr Suarez's case.

Suarez ... well what can you say? I was pinching him to try and defuse the situation. LOL!

Then it gets better! The FA asks his lawyer why he would say something so silly as pinching him to defuse the situation and the best response he can come up with is .... umm bad drafting of the statement, that's not what he meant! (section 250) .... after assuring the FA that care was taken over drafting of the witness statement.

Then the whole (I'm fluent in Spanish) director of football thing reporting what was said to the referee only to later say that maybe he didn't hear correctly is laughable.

Deserves the eight matches simply for the gongshow of a defence.

[The Big Chill]

Originally Posted by diane_phaneuf

Suarez admitted to saying the word...

which in Europe is an extremely racist word, and he has been in Europe for I believe 5 years now so the ignorance excuse doesn't work

Right, but Suarez's story says that he called him negro after Evra called him South American, and Evra says Suarez used it a bunch of times. We have no idea which story is true (although its likely somewhere in the middle of the two stories), so how can they decide on a punishment from that?

As I said before, I am completely on board with trying to stamp out racism, but this situation seems to have been handled poorly.

Anyways, I hope Liverpool and Suarez just accept the ban now and get the the 8 games out of the way. I want this thing to disappear as fast as possible.

[The Big Chill]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Liverpool at their most entertaining!

Highlight for me was that it turns out that Daglish played a role in contradicting and screwing over Suarez.



Suarez ... well what can you say? I was pinching him to try and defuse the situation. LOL!

I don't understand how that is contradictory. Evra called him South American, Suarez called him black.

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by The Big Chill

I don't understand how that is contradictory. Evra called him South American, Suarez called him black.

Here ....

304

Secondly, at least as expressly reported by Mr Dalglish, Mr Suarez's remark was a riposte to being taunted by Mr Evra. If that is correct, it would suggest that Mr Dalglish understood Mr Suarez's comment to be in the nature of retaliation for having been called "South American". But that would suggest that the riposte "You are black" was used in a derogatory sense, which is contrary to Mr Suarez's case. In fact, Mr Suarez told us that he did not consider being described as South American to be derogatory, so it is difficult to understand why this was referred to as a "taunt".

Suarez claimed that the word was used with no ill-meaning and wasn't retaliatory. Daglish then contradicts him by deciding that he used the word as a retaliation (suggesting a derogatory intent) to being taunted.

[The Big Chill]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Here ....

304

Suarez claimed that the word was used with no ill-meaning and wasn't retaliatory. Daglish then contradicts him by deciding that he used the word as a retaliation (suggesting a derogatory intent) to being taunted.

Thank you for finding that, I'm not going to go through that whole beast of a paper.

This is still all a bunch of assumptions though. They assume that Suarez's comments are derogatory because Dalglish says they were in retaliation to Evra's comments?

You would think that if Suarez said "Negro" as any times as Evra has claimed, that one of the 20 other players on the pitch, or the ref, or the linesman, or the managers, or the substitute players, or the media members and camera men would have heard or seen some of this taking place.

The fact that nobody else knew this was happening is a lot better proof then Evra's statements.

[Bagor]

It doesn't really matter how many times he said it.

The fact of the matter is that he admitted to saying it once.

[The Big Chill]

Originally Posted by Bagor

It doesn't really matter how many times he said it.

The fact of the matter is that he admitted to saying it once.

Right, but unless I'm missing something here, what he admitted saying isn't really offensive or racist.

[NBC]

Originally Posted by Bagor

It doesn't really matter how many times he said it.

The fact of the matter is that he admitted to saying it once.

Apparently it does matter how many times he said the alleged slur.

Suarez is said to have used the term "negro" seven times in around two minutes.

In giving the reasons for the length of the ban, the report said: "Given the number of times that Mr Suarez used the word 'negro', his conduct is significantly more serious than a one-off use of a racially offensive term and amounts to an aggravating factor."

It was submitted by the FA that the conduct of Mr Suarez has damaged the image of English football around the world, given that the conduct occurred during the course of one of the most famous games in English football, watched by a huge number of people around the world.

Points 410, 411 and 412 in the report are the applicable ones here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/16375963.stm

[united]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2...rez?CMP=twt_gu
Suárez's claims that he pinched Evra's skin in an attempt to defuse the row in the Liverpool goalmouth and that his use of the word "negro" to address his opponent was conciliatory and friendly were rejected out of hand. "To describe his own behaviour in that way was unsustainable and simply incredible given that the players were engaged in an acrimonious argument. That this was put forward by Mr Suárez was surprising and seriously undermined the reliability of his evidence on other matters," the report says.

http://quizzicaleyebrow.wordpress.co...-to-judgement/
The evidence from Marriner and Dowd was that both Dalglish and Comolli had said that Suarez had told them that he had said “[because] you are black” to Evra, although it was unclear in what context. This came across identically in the English (from Dalglish) and the Spanish (from Comolli), but importantly Dowd asked Comolli to spell out the Spanish “tues negro” for the report.
Comolli later denied spelling out “tues”, and said that he had only done so with the word “negro”, but the Commission decided that it was unlikely that Dowd and Marriner had made this up in a report written within hours of the event.

Even allowing for this decision, the Commission did make strenuous efforts to discover whether the phrase “why, black?” could, as Suarez claimed, have been a friendly attempt to calm things down. Two experts in Spanish language and culture in South America were asked to produce reports. They stated that, yes, in some contexts the word “negro” was used as a “matey” term, in the same way we might use “fatty”. But they also reported that some black residents of the area found this unwelcome and, more crucially, if anyone used it in an angry or confrontational way it would be understood to be racially offensive.
It was also noted that Suarez only began using the argument that he used the word “in a conciliatory manner” after he had seen the experts’ report which discussed this as a possibility.

Those paragraphs say it all. The defence put forward by Suarez and Liverpool is bordering on pathetic and hilarious. Pretty clear cut case. Sad how they all change their stories after finding new evidence.

[chris_yk]

what a game that was today! with MON in charge we're finally starting to look like a top-half team again!

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by united

Pretty clear cut case.

Or is it?

There's also an alternative theory.

Originally Posted by lucretius on ManUtdtalk.com

Hatchet job. Everyone knows the courts are out to get Liverpool. They're terrified of a young, vibrant, Liverpool with King Kenny at the helm. Most judges are probably United fans, or Chelsea fans, or Spurs fans, or City fans, or Arsenal fans, or Everton fans and they're all ####ting themselves at the idea of Liverpool seriously rivalling their team. And the CPS! They hate Liverpool too, probably jealous. Or scared. Or Mancs. Of course the FA couldn't bear to see Liverpool doing well, probably still bitter over all Liverpool's success. And ****-scared of Fergie, who's probably pulling all the strings behind this. Anyone who's looked at the evidence knows that the only thing Suarez has admitted to is calling Evra a negro, which is ok as long as it's in Spanish! Ask anyone! Except those two independent Spanish experts who concluded that it would definitely be construed as racist, because they're Mancs.

[TopChed]

Suarez needs to tone down a lot of things in his game. He's a quality player, but this racist diatribe is just another in a list of his glaring behavioural faults. I'm pretty disappointed with everything I've read about what he said, since it seems fairly clear he mentioned Evra's race repeatedly, and in a negative way.

I think there are a lot of Liverpool fans who are blindly following the club on this issue, and they think there must be more to the story if LFC / Kenny backed Suarez fully and appealed the decision. From what I've seen, they should have issued a statement that Suarez's actions were unacceptable, and that the punishment delivered by the FA would not be appealed. I know teams/managers have to stick up for their players, but this seems pretty clear cut.

I'm hoping Suarez accepts he was completely wrong, and I hope it will help change his future behaviour. No more of this racist BS. I'm also tired of seeing him throwing his hands up for a call, yelling at referees/linesmen, and throwing tantrums on the field. It's time to grow up for #7.

[NBC]

Good article from the BBC's business editor Robert Peston. I thought this was an interesting tidbit of information:

As a third-generation Arsenal supporter, it worried me that I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to Mr Redknapp - although there was small consolation in his confession that he grew up a Gooner (he told me the most exciting match he ever saw at Highbury was Arsenal versus Manchester United on the weekend before the 1958 Munich Air Crash).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16357044

[d_phaneuf]

bad day for Arsenal

Chelsea win late, Arsenal drop 3 points late and should have been given a pelanty

[Jimmy Stang]

A funny holiday week in general. A lot of upsets and unlikely results. Back to work tomorrow, so I'll have to watch Liverpool-Man City in a little window in the corner of my screen again.

Norwich caught a lucky break thanks to Joey Barton's alleged headbutt. Seeing it live on TV, and even after seeing replays, I can't say that I can see anything conclusive. They go face to face, Johnson pulls away, but there isn't any sort of wind-up (for lack of a better term) from Barton. Zidane, it wasn't. Certainly Barton's reputation precedes him sometimes, and in this case, it allowed Norwich to take an important 3 points away from home.

[d_phaneuf]

Kenny has been banned from Coronation Street


Bill_Roache William Roache
@kennethdalglish Saddened by your role in the Suarez affair Ken. Consider yourself blackballed from the Bill Roache Golf Invitational 2012.

[d_phaneuf]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

A funny holiday week in general. A lot of upsets and unlikely results. Back to work tomorrow, so I'll have to watch Liverpool-Man City in a little window in the corner of my screen again.

Norwich caught a lucky break thanks to Joey Barton's alleged headbutt. Seeing it live on TV, and even after seeing replays, I can't say that I can see anything conclusive. They go face to face, Johnson pulls away, but there isn't any sort of wind-up (for lack of a better term) from Barton. Zidane, it wasn't. Certainly Barton's reputation precedes him sometimes, and in this case, it allowed Norwich to take an important 3 points away from home.

Barton said after the game the ref admitted to being conned, he didn't see the headbut only the reaction

[d_phaneuf]

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by diane_phaneuf

Barton said after the game the ref admitted to being conned, he didn't see the headbut only the reaction

The ref didn't even stop play right away, and presumably only did after the linesman alerted him. But in replays, the far-side linesman didn't raise his flag or do anything - he just kept going with the play as well. So was it the linesman even further from the play? We'll probably never know.

Even with my green and yellow glasses on, I can't help but think that Barton was hard done by on that one.