OzzieMandias

Tennants. Scottish, innit. Tennant's super strengh, all the jakeys drink it. Double turbo tennants super strength. Deep fried.

I see the BBC have pixelated Suarez's hand gesture in case it offends anyone. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/16148570.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/dec/27/five-things-learned-boxing-day-football

That's an embarrassing record. On the basis of that pattern, we could be in for the first of four 4–0 defeats.

Looks like the whole of Uruguay is busy hurling its toys out of the pram. http://www.sabotagetimes.com/football-sport/what-uruguayans-are-saying-about-the-f-as-treatment-of-liverpools-luis-suarez/

That's the other side of the coin: beyond what the words Suarez used may mean, there's the question of what's racist, which is *very* dependent on culture. What would be perceived in hyper-sensitive Britain as racist would not be in other cultures less sensitive to racism. And then there's the differing sensitivity to perceived racism against different races: in the UK, people are very sensitive to racism against blacks but not against, say, Albanians because there are a lot of blacks but few Albanians. A few weeks ago, an extremely liberal, pro-immigrant German lass who spends all her time helping kids from immigrant families, who would never dream of saying anything anti-Turkish, told me that "laying an Obama in the White House" is slang for having a shit (there are very few black people in Germany, and most racism is directed against Turks, Arabs and East Europeans). ------------------- With regards to the FA's ruling: it's a complete cop-out. They've found him guilty of indecent/abusive behaviour and punished him for racism. An 8 match ban is ridiculous for what they've found him guilty of. FFS, Rooney got a 2-game ban for running up to the TV camera and shouting "fuck off" into it. They should have either given him a punishment typical of the violation they found him guilty of or had the balls to label him a racist along with clearly you've-been-found-guilty-of-racism ban they handed him. Whilst I agree with the first half of your post that's not necessarily the point. It may well be inoffensive in his culture but there are ramifications beyond that - he's been in Europe for some time by now and as such must realise that it's extremely offensive to refer to people in such a manner. He's not a complete idiot, surely he knew what he was doing and as such theoretically it could still be construed as racist? I'm just theorising mind, don't know the ins and outs of the case. Plus it's funny as fuck he's been banned for 8 games. Or maybe not. It seems bizarre that this could have been the first time he'd said such things in four years. Also, seeing as there were no other witnesses, why did Suarez freely admit he'd said "negrito"? If he had believed it was racist, surely he'd have just denied it. More likely, he wasn't aware of how hypersensitive the UK is to perceived racism. Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse. If Suarez doesn't understand that the UK is different from Uruguay then that's either his fault or the fault of Liverpool FC.

Well, I made my original point without any rancour. I've no idea why johnnypd got his nylons in such a twist about it.

Well, if anyone can do what Lawrenson does, why don't you knob off and get yourself a job doing it? I'm sure it'll pay better than flipping burgers, and you might be able to afford an evening class in Understanding Media on the side.

Sigh.

No, you still haven't got it. In terms of what his employers want him to do -- drive traffic to their website -- he's performing extremely well.

Seemed a simple enough point to me. "But they didn't" is an allusion to what the artist Damien Hirst always says when people point at one of his spin paintings and say, "Seventy grand?? But I could have done that!!" Post your match predictions up on the internet and see who's interested. I'm guessing pretty much no one. Lawrenson has whole websites dedicated to his predictions. People go to the BBC website, read his nonsense and talk about it, as we are here. He's therefore doing his job rather well. The accuracy of the predictions is entirely secondary to the basic purpose of his employment.

Aye, but they didn't. What's your point? http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,57913.msg3379491.html#msg3379491

Aye, but they didn't.

He's no use to us playing baseball, man.

Everyone reads it, he gets people talking, whole websites are devoted to his predictions -- like or not, he's earning his money, and this thread is an example of why.

Must be hard to resist giving him a kick, to be fair.

Me neither. I mean, what does it actually involve, in practice? As it happened, he got his chance, and took it brilliantly.

Neymar, Rooney, Messi.

Martin O'Mackem.

I expected Ronaldo to say this sooner or later.

Another piece where the writer has got his tongue so far up O'Neill's arse that you wonder how he can type properly. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/dec/03/martin-oneill-sunderland-manager

Assuming you don't see yourself as an enormous tit, that's likely true.

Good on ya, midds.

I'm guessing that a bit more spent on agents' fees might be some kind of trade-off consequence of doing deals in weird loophole areas that avoid massive transfer fees. Someone's got to deal with all those "clauses".