In that case, name me another major, industrial city in the UK that doesn't have "eholes" in it's outlying areas?



You're also doing the people that live there a great disservice as well. Pretty houses and greenery don't always make for nice, welcoming people and wonderful areas. I've had more good experiences in both Levenshulme (if you're going to slag it off, spell it right FFS) and Gorton.



I'd also be interested (no, I don't pay that much attention on here and it'd probably be obvious if I did) in which grand, "ehole"-less utopia you hail from?









Apologies to the rest of you for derailing this a little. Back to the football...

Great strike of the football from Baines. Wall or not wall there is no denying that. Unstoppable. I'm looking forward to seeing Everton over the second part of the season, usually they start off sluggishly and finish strongly, can they keep up their good start? I think they can, I don't think there's a more balanced team in the PL.



Someone mentioned Distin, one of the most underrated central defenders the PL has ever seen. Served all his club with distinction and is constantly good, 35 years old playing like he's 25.



Liverpool did what I'd expected them to do to Sunderland, bigger tests the next few weeks United, Arsenal and City away, if we seriously want to be taken seriously for a top 4 spot then we need to perform in those games and pick up points. All three games are winnable.

Baines is a good player but it's hard to say he's the best when he isn't playing against the best. He isn't great defensively but he's very good going forward. If I had to take one out of Baines, Schmelzer, Coentrao, Marcelo, Alba, Lahm and Filipe Luis, Baines would probably be towards the bottom of that list. He's a good player, especially when you factor in his partnership with Pienaar, but I'd take a few others over him.



Looking forward to seeing how Rodgers uses Sturridge with Suarez. Both players can play centrally or out wide whilst they probably thrive when given a role where they can roam with freedom. We've seen Suarez regularly move out to the flanks with Sterling or Downing coming in centrally before, so it really isn't that big a problem, I just wonder if Rodgers is going to stick Sturridge up top strictly playing off the last defender.

Agreed. And how many times have we seen walls fail to do their jobs recently - Nasri and Wilshere immediately leap to mind.

Makes me wonder whether it's a tactic worth persevering with. Might be a better idea to let the keeper have a good look at it, maybe get a couple on the posts. Worth trying, anyway.

[urlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2256586/Mario-Balotelli-Roberto-Mancini-training-ground-fight.html[/url

Just checked out the vid on the net and TBH I have to retract what I've said.



When I watched the GIF was loading frame by frame and I thought the defenders had let the ball go between them.That's why I was so dismissive of the job they did.



Having just seeked out the video and seen Baines struck the free kick just to the side I can appreciate the quality of the strike. I agree that it it up with the best strikes of players like Ronaldo and Carlos.



I do think the geordie defender was wrong to turn his back and jump like he did, but that was almost irrelevant anyway. Possibly you could say that NU had too few men in the wall, but I think they took the chance because of the distance to goal. They were almost inviting a shot because it would need to be a perfect shot to score. Baines produced that shot.

Someone's account has been hacked, Mods!

The authorities are proving ineffective in dealing with the problem of racism in football, so players are taking the matter into their own hands: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20903561 I think this could be the start of something big.

The authorities are proving ineffective in dealing with the problem of racism in football, so players are taking the matter into their own hands: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20903561 I think this could be the start of something big.

Let's hope so. I'm completely in support of their actions. When a single player gets fined more for flashing a shirt i.e. Bentner than an actual country's FA does i.e. Serbia, it's clear the authorities don't treat the issue seriously. Active resistance is the way forward and perhaps they can include discrimination against other groups as e.g. women, LGBT etc.

Footage here. www.thenation.com/blog/172009/mu ... ism-teeth#

Footage here. www.thenation.com/blog/172009/mu ... ism-teeth#

Fully agree with your post....I visit many, many places and am yet to find a place that doesn't contain a ehole or two in its neighboorhood (bar the odd quaint village here and there), and seeing as I'm from Warrington then Ive seen a few round here too...





The point I was originally trying to make was that another poster was trying to make out that Manchester was somehow superior to Liverpool, when, quite obviously, it isn't....

Should say about that Baines free kick that it was almost as good as 37 year-old Mickey Thomas' against Arsenal in the cup all those years back (before these penny floater balls you have now as well). Although I don't recall, at the time, Wrexham fans coming on the internet asking other fans to recognise Thomas as being a Welsh left-footed footballing wizard.

Say, for example, Citeh are beating AC Milan in the knock out stages of the CL (I know, difficult for you to imagine). Citeh look to be on the verge of knocking AC Milan out when the Milan players react to their perceived racial abuse by some Citeh fans by walking off the pitch and refusing to conclude the game.



What happens now?

NOTICE FROM ADMIN.



we can confirm that the account of Lord God Jose Mourinho has not be hacked.

However enquiries have shown that he recently suffered a bang on the head and this has led to him making a reasoned and sensible post.



Medical opinion is that this will only be a temporary blip and that normal posting will soon be restored.



This will include the usual fanatical defence of all things Chelski and completely irrational postings about other premiership teams.



Thank You for your patience and we apologise for any misunderstanding caused by LGJM s last post.



admin.

BBC Sporf's joke twitter account has not only duped a Dutch website into believing their "Balotelli to Liverpool" tweet, but now seems to have engineered a move to QPR for Wesley Sneijder, which made it onto Channel 4 news.

City fans learn a harsh lesson about racist chanting. Racism takes precedence over sport and the players know that well enough to not be walking off the pitch for any old bother, which is what I think you might be hinting at. Even then if the issue is to allow racial abuse or feign receiving it I'd rather somebody feign it than racial abuse to continue in the way that it has. Why should anybody have to put up with it? It's the same in most people's work so I'm at a loss to wonder why it should be different for football.

Whilst I think every situation should be treated differently, I don't think walking off is the solution. Walking off penalises too many people for something they can't influence. If I was in a stadium of 40,000+, I'd be fuming if a crowd of less than 1% meant I'd miss out on something I'd forked out a fair amount for. Now, if there's a stadium almost in unison abusing a team, it's obvious that something extreme should happen, but when it's minor crowds or a few fans, I think it only empowers the idiots and punishes the decent ones.

Let's face it, if UEFA took the issue seriously in the first instance players wouldn't be walking off. Simple as that. That players are walking off suggests to me that they are not happy with the way UEFA treats it. We ALL have a responsibility to stop racism and that includes fans in the seats and terraces. If you hear somebody chanting racist abuse you have a choice. If you choose to let it go and a player walks off then more fool you for believing football is more important that somebody receiving racial abuse. If UEFA did treat the issue seriously then people like the Serbian FA would have received a proper punishment which forces them and their fans to deal with it themselves, and we probably wouldn't be having this conversation every other month. That we are suggests to me stronger action needs to be taken. I know there's nobody here who feels spending £50 and seeing a full match is more important than a player receiving racial abuse throughout a match, as most of the recent incidents have been in Europe (i.e. they tend to be isolated 1% morons in the UK but not in Europe where the rise of fascism is a very real thing today).

Sorry, should have been a bit clearer on this bit. You're right, it's not a solution in the way that strikes are not a solution to a work dispute. However, there comes a time in the latter when the workers feel they have to strike for management to take the issue seriously because they continually ignore it (e.g. health and safety, bullying, harassment). This is no different to football. Sometimes drastic action has to be taken to make the point and thankfully Boateng has done it in a friendly so there's little impact to the footballing season. If it was me I wouldn't be sitting there taking it. I'd be doing exactly the same to apply pressure to the authorities to tackle the issue.

Do you think KPB walked off today in dispute against UEFA? I don't. He got upset by either an incident or numerous incidents where he'd received racial abuse. His team obviously decided to come off because of it, but that for me isn't a way to get at UEFA, especially during a friendly game against a bunch of nobodies.



I'm not disputing that UEFA need to do more, what I'm disputing is how to deal with it happening in a football stadium. I could guarantee you now, if an FA cup final was cut short by 70 minutes because of an incident of racial abuse, there'd be a fair number of fans that would want a refund of some sorts, and rightly so. Yes, they'd support the black or white player that had been abused, but they wouldn't walk away without getting what they'd paid for.



Yes, we all have a duty to deal with things but it still isn't right. If I'm in the Kop end at Anfield and the two hundred or so travelling Fulham fans decide to give it the monkey chants to Raheem Sterling around the ten minute mark, what can I do about that? If the players walk off, how do I deal with it? Do I send an angry complaint to UEFA because them not dealing with Serbia has led to this?



UEFA should have come down hard on Serbia, same with the many other incidents that have happened, but if walking off during games becomes the norm when/if this happens again, it will only empower the idiots, which is the last thing that should be happening. I get what you mean by protesting with your feet, but walking out on a game isn't the right way to make UEFA act (by the way, what can UEFA really do about a problem that's more to do with society rather than football? I know they should have banned Serbia but how does that alter a problem that's prevalent in society?). Racism is a massive thing and I don't think what Milan did today will do much to change anything. It's brilliant to see they feel so strongly about it, but it should be dealt with either by more/improved stewarding or by an alternative method. It's a hard one to get right to be honest, as I said, I don't think punishing the majority is the correct way to go about it, I don't even think it's the right way to go about getting UEFA or FIFA to act. Clubs, FAs, the governing bodies and even the governments themselves need to be united on this and need to tackle it together, so trying to 'make points' and 'force action' really isn't the way to start that, regardless of the ridiculous cock-ups in the past. Despite football's huge appeal, it will be very hard to make an impact if everybody isn't united on it. If it's only Britain or only UEFA and the football clubs that are trying, it will never work.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/gossip/Seems the comic and the Beeb have fallen for it too.[/url

It won't empower idiots. Once their teams gets a ban or two they'll stop doing it. Simple. Come on Roddy, we both want the same thing, for it to stop. I know of no other employer that would allow their staff to stand their and take racist abuse from a customer. Why should football be different? Football clubs actually have a legal responsibility to ensure that racist abuse does not happen so we're not talking about a wild initiative here. This is bigger than football itself and it is everybody's responsibility not just the governments.

Me too. But the problem with the "walk off" is that its too hit and miss. Some players will walk off more readily than others. Some players are less likely to hear or register abuse than others. Some black players have said that they will not walk off because they think that means that they've "lost".



The onus to take action shouldn't be on the players. It should be initially with the referee. If action isn't taken then I would have no problems with a walk off but I'd expect it to be instigated by a club official rather than the players or manager.

I'm glad you've admitted to that.









That's fair enough. But it could have been made properly without initially labelling the city a ehole, couldn't it now?

Am I right in thinking that under the current laws of the game, if a team walks off and refuses to come back then they forfeit the match?



It would then be down to the respective governing bodies to decide what happens to league points etc?



I can to an extent see some logic in Seedorf's comments, if players walking off are going to lead their teams being punished for taking a stand against racist abuse. It's potentially going to give the idiots a weapon they can use tactically - your team getting humped, why not start making monkey noises at the black players in the opposition to try and get them to walk off?