Jah Lush

Just read it myself. Excellent article.

Good one Flapjackdavey. Sly & Robbie.

Oh Ledley, Ledley, he's only got one knee, but he's better than John Terry, oh Ledley Ledley!!

Tottenham Hotspur are asking people to text 07537 404821 to report any racial or homophobic abuse tonight. People should really bombard that number with texts reporting 'the fella on the pitch in the blue shirt with number 26 on the back...'

Yeah! Mine's almost gone too.

DulwichFox Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > After being made redundant in 2008 and still > ueimployed have not claimed or indeed been told > intitled to a single > penny in benefits since. You got a nice little pay-off then.

Arf! Think I may be singing that one in the pub tonight Parkdrive whilst watching the match. Hopefully, despite a few injuries Spurs can beat Chelski tonight.

Yeah, not once but twice. Some old-timers are still ignorant of modern manners and parlance. You'd have thought he'd have known better.

You're right. No need to debate it. You misread it and that's an undisputed truth.

A good article on the subject today by James Lawton in today's Independent. The first two letters are worth a read too. An emphatic stand against racism in English football.

Gullible you say. So what's acceptable all over south America is not acceptable here. That's it. Guilty. We can see that and such words aren't acceptable here. But considering Suarez is of mixed race himself and the word "negreto" is commonplace and even used as a term of endearment where he's from because of such nuances and cultural differences what would sound racist to us here in England is not to South Americans so he's guilty (of naivety if nothing else) because he is unaware of those differences. Hmmm... An innocent abroad. Evra's Mexican team-mate Hernandez has mentioned calling him the same thing without a problem. Why didn't Evra complain about Hernandez then or why haven't the FA charged him too seeing as both players have admitted using the word? I don't think Evra has covered himself in glory in this instance and nor have the FA. Let's see what happens to John Terry who from my take from lip reading said "I didn't call you a fucking black cunt." Should be interesting.

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- "I just don't think he's funny, and I think he's unpleasant about other people to disguise his own shortcomings". That's pretty much how I feel about Gervais. I remember when I first heard him on XFM back in the day and immediately thinking what an irritating, unfunny little prick he was. He reminds me of a pub bore sitting at the bar and smugly telling a racist joke and thinking it's funny and you should laugh along with him without the self-awareness to realise what dick he is making of himself.

Hmmm... Where's the evidence? He has 14 days to appeal. It's one man's word against another's. I don't think it would stand up in a court of law. It's an option he should take if he wants to clear his name.

You won't need to worry about that if it's cancelled.

Indeed Jeremy. But the difference for me is that Fawlty Towers and Alan Partridge would have you laughing out loud whereas Ricky Gervais just makes you cringe. I quite enjoyed the first two but then it fell away and was usual Gervais fare. He has the sort of smug face that you want to punch. (see also Piers Moron). I did however enjoy Extras. The one with David Bowie in was a corker.

Yes please. Marvelous.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ...and Arsenal get AC Milan :)) They weren't a problem for Spurs last season. Beat 'em home and away. Be good to see if Le Arse can match those results. ;-)

Yeah! Good one. A farewell tour for Man Utd before he departs for that next lucrative contract at Paris St Germain.

Hmm... you may be right. I'm sure they'll correct me if I'm wrong and it looks like I may be. Still, I wouldn't wish that particular illness on anyone. Sounds horrible. I see some of the tabs have gone in for some very lazy journalism today with Spurs apparently in for Tevez at ?20 million and Kaka on loan. Yeah, right. We can't afford their wages packets for starters. Citeh are still paying Adebayor ?100,000 a week for him to play for us! This kind of spurious transfer speculation always seems to fill up space on the sports pages this time of year. Utter crap.

I think you've misread Otta's post Parkdrive.

Reminds me of Canary Wharf. Utterly soulless.

OK. I'm over it. Onwards and upwards until it goes tits up again which it will do inevitably because this is Spurs we're talking about here. Oh! And I'll save you the time Parkdrive - "fcuk the scum. 61' never again."

And Ian Hutchison used to do the same for Chelsea back in the early 70s but at least that team could play a bit. Did you watch the match on Sunday Otta? Stoke City at their worst.

Yes. Utterly vile and vulgar.

From today's Independent. By James Lawton. The Stoke City fashioned with ferocious application by their manager, Tony Pulis, have so many admirable qualities it is not an easy thing to say, but say it one must. Their victory over Tottenham, apart from being almost entirely the result of some of the most egregiously wretched match officiating we are ever likely to see, was a triumph for anti-football. Indeed, in terms of natural justice, of that warm feeling which comes when you know that the right thing has happened, it wasn't very far from a street mugging. It was, if we can put aside for a moment the appalling performance of referee Chris Foy, a superbly marshalled version of the dark force, no doubt. Certainly, it was enough to send a surge of pride through the Potteries region which once gave the world the unforgettable magic of the late Sir Stanley Matthews. You might care to throw in some other commendations. Certainly, you can praise Pulis's continued ability to present the aristocrats of English football with insuperable problems while operating on the treadmill of Thursday night Europa League football and a sharply inferior budget. You have to respect a professional duty to make life as difficult as possible for your most formidable opponents. You have to warm to some degree to a team so utterly unfazed by the kind of shortfall in natural-born ability they experienced on Sunday against the likes of Luka Modric, Gareth Bale and Emmanuel Adebayor. You can even go some way with the splendid old pro Dion Dublin when he declares that one of the great virtues of Stoke is their refusal to "complicate things". Yet can anyone truly say, once they have taken from the equation the old force of tribal loyalty, that watching Stoke City on a regular basis has much of an edge on a session of root-canal work? Is the special towel sewn into the shirt of Ryan Shotton, the long-throw successor to the legendary ball-hurler Rory Delap, an article that speaks of the spontaneous glory of the world's favourite game or a robot's artefact? This is not to insult a young player who, when he isn't throwing the ball vast distances at the head of Peter Crouch, displays some impressively well-rounded football gifts. It is more to worry about the point at which a single tactic is not an arrow in your quiver but pretty much the whole shooting match. Yes, Stoke do have other assets and most conspicuously a relish for the battle which has established them in the Premier League. Also true is the fact that in the first half against Spurs they showed far more appetite and concentration for the job in hand. The trouble was that Tottenham in the end adjusted to the demands of the contest, produced football that was both wonderfully engaging and, by some distance, deserving of the spoils. That they didn't receive their rewards was a direct result of official incompetence, an example of it which was so relentless it might have served as Exhibit A in the case for overall match supervision that can draw upon the instant TV evidence available to everyone but the referee ? one who, in this case, utterly distorted the result of a game which might just affect the outcome of such important matters as the destiny of the League title or a place in the Champions League. In the circumstances, Spurs' manager Harry Redknapp reacted with impressive restraint. In his half-time readjustments, Redknapp recognised the effectiveness of the Stoke tactics and produced a belated game plan which in normal circumstances would surely have been properly reward. No doubt many will say that bad stuff happens in football, as elsewhere, and that the obligation is to get on with it. However, what happened at the Britannia Stadium was in some ways a classic test of top-flight English football's ability to render something other than a travesty of anything that passed for justice. This isn't to whinge on behalf of football's resurrected glamour teams, an outfit Bill Shankly once christened, with a snarl, "the Drury Lane Boys". Some Stoke fans were no doubt inclined to agree with that description after Modric went down for a penalty somewhat theatrically. They booed the brilliant little man relentlessly, but the reality was that it was unquestionably a penalty. Another one was that Spurs had ultimately produced an impressive antidote to the problem of Stoke. They did it with the football that lifts the heart. They did it with wit and pace and at times quite sumptuous skill. They reminded us why we bother with all the excesses of the game, all the self-promoting hype and the often dreary functionalism produced by players earning more than heart surgeons. It is because we seek out those moments when the game becomes beautiful in its fluent rhythm and explosive possibilities. Less pleasing for the neutral eye, though Stoke fans could maybe not care less, is the trajectory of a throw rifled into a mass of largely anarchic bodies straining for the crucial flick-on. This, with the help of a palpable handling of the ball by Crouch, gave Stoke the vital momentum against a team who had come with a different set of priorities. It was, yes of course, a formidable pressure but long before the end it had been effectively countered. This did not, however, cause too much of a dent in the belief that, if the circumstances were maybe a little outrageous, the result was still a triumph for a certain kind of courage. Maybe so but it will never replace the allure of real football.