By Dave Bowler 

The consensus is that empty grounds are the catalyst for it all, that the eerie atmosphere and the lack of a baying crowd is somehow playing with the dynamics of games. This is probably true, but not necessarily in the way that we would have anticipated.

The logic would be that home advantage doesn’t matter as much, that not having thousands of fans urging on the home side would automatically make life better for the away team.

Tell that to Aston Villa and Liverpool after the hosts destroyed the champions of England 7-2. And even if Spurs�winning at Old Trafford might have been more on the scale of what we might expect to see, for Manchester United to lose 6-1 to anyone, anywhere, is still off the scale weird.

It seems that the biggest difference isn’t so much whether your fans are there to outnumber the other lot and so drive you on. It’s more that when there are no fans at all, when you don’t have that constant rumble of noise that gets the adrenalin going, footballers lose that competitive edge, that extra couple of percentage points that makes the difference.

Empty Stadiums

Players have already spoken about playing in an empty stadium, that is a surreal experience to them. Statistics tend to show that players aren’t running as far, nor as fast, as in comparable fixtures in front of crowds. I don’t think this is anything deliberate on their part, they’re not choosing to slack off. I think it’s more likely a simple physiological reaction to that lack of adrenalin.

When it isn’t there, then you have to compensate for it yourself and that’s where mental strength comes in, an area where the modern sportsman is perhaps lacking, so great has been the concentration on athleticism.

In many sports now, we regularly see that once one team or individual gets on top, the other capitulates. In tennis, until you get to the sharp end of tournaments, we seem to see far more one sided matches than in the past. How many cricket Tests between relatively well matched sides are now all over bar the shouting by the second day, the one side virtually throwing the towel in rather than trying to chisel out a draw?

Digging in in the face of adversity takes real character and it’s where football has tended to do better than other sports in recent times. As it now turns out, there was largely because of the nature of the crowd.

Atmosphere

In individual sports, crowds are rarely that partisan. In cricket, the crowds are smaller and much further away from the action. But in football, the crowds are on top of you, immensely vocal, and you let them down at your peril. Which isn’t to say huge beatings don’t happen in front of huge crowds of course, but when things go against you in front of empty seats, you have to find the hunger to fight from deep within, not by drawing on the crowd. That separates the wheat from the chaff.

Aberdeen are instructive in that regard, one of the few teams to have played in front of a crowd �albeit 300 people �this season. They beat Kilmarnock 1-0, manager Derek McInnes saying how the few fans immediately made a difference and how determined the players were to reward then with a win.

Their next game at Pittodrie was back behind closed doors against bottom placed Motherwell. They conceded after four minutes and by halfway through the first half were losing 3-0.

So perhaps we are going to have to get used to teams collapsing like a house of cards, perhaps even both in the same game as happened between West Brom and Chelsea. It’s all in the mind you know�/p>

Dave Bowler is the author of “The Magic of the Cup 1973/74� telling the story of Liverpool’s FA Cup win in 1974. Available here: http://www.curtis-sport.com/books –�/a>

Follow the magic of the cup on Twitter:  @MagicOfFACup

By Dave Bowler 

With the bulk of League One and Two clubs not having played since March, and with plenty more time ahead of them still stuck on the sidelines, their plight, collectively and individually looks grim. The hope has been that delay might allow them to play in front of fans, but that looks an increasingly forlorn hope, not least because it’s virtually all or nothing for them.

Open a stadium in Carlisle, Mansfield or Rochdale and just let in, say 30% capacity and it’s going to cost more money than they can bring in just to open the stands, bring in stewards, policing etc. Add to that the probability that they will not be selling drinks, possibly not food on site and that corporate hospitality, if there is any, will be just a shadow of what it was and you have a recipe for piling disaster on top of catastrophe. Those clubs will need all the help they can get from the fans and the wider “football family� So it’ll just be their fans then�/p>

Premier League

For Premier League clubs, and much of the Championship too, it’s a different story. Because where for the lower league clubs, there’s a symbiotic relationship, they need each other, the events of the last few months have shown something very different at the top end if the game.

A couple of months of watching football in empty stadia has made it very apparent that without fans, this game dies. Without fans there is no spectacle, no atmosphere, it affects the intensity of performances. Without fans, football is a ghost game.

So for the first time in an age, the fans hold the whip hand – if they want to use it. It’s time they did because for too long, they’ve allowed their addiction to their club to be exploited. Because here’s the truth. Your football club really doesn’t care about you. For the most part, it doesn’t even like you, because there you are in the stadium, booing the players when they lose, asking where the money’s gone after another lousy transfer window, gumming up social media with demands to sack the manager or the board.

They think you are a bloody nuisance, they hate you, but love your money, which is why they rip you off year after year, exploiting your loyalty by bringing out three more new shirts and by charging ticket prices that would get you into the warmth and comfort of a cinema two or three times over.

Empty Stadia

But now, the tables are turned. Because if you don’t go back, the game is up. Empty stadia stink. Full stadia make a compelling show in which your noise is as important as the centre-forward who is getting £150,000 a week. Do movie companies charge the supporting actors for turning up to the shoot? No. The clubs ought to be paying you for your attendance, your participation, but in the inevitable absence of that, ticket prices should fall through the floor.

And if they don’t, fans should get together and remind the clubs what a lousy, unwatchable show they’ve been putting on for the TV cameras these last couple of months�/p>

Dave Bowler is the author of “The Magic of the Cup 1973/74� telling the story of Liverpool’s FA Cup win in 1974. Available here: http://www.curtis-sport.com/books –�/a>

The Premier League is back but much of the action seems to have taken place off the field as we wrestle again with the thorny issue of whether sport and politics should mix. It is, as ever, complicated.

The blanket support for Black Lives Matter, with players wearing that rather than their names on the backs of their shirts and all of them, and the match officials, taking the knee just before kick-off has raised some controversy.

On the face of it, it looks pretty simple. It’s a good cause, the right cause, so surely it should be supported, all the more so in a country where the current Foreign Secretary, holder one of the three great Offices of State in the UK, seems to believing that taking the knee is something to do with “Game of Thrones��no, really.

Some have protested that football should stick to just providing entertainment and perhaps there is something in that. Maybe we do all need a little escape from politics, a little oasis.

Stand Up

Maybe. But in times like these, don’t you think that particular privilege has passed for the moment? Isn’t this really a time for being engaged, for standing up for what you believe, for being able to say what you think? Individuals being free to make their stand, that can only be right can’t it? But that’s where the real complication comes in. When individuals take a stand, that’s powerful. When organisations do it, you’re required to look a little more closely at their motives.

The fact that all the players and officials are essentially being required to take the knee by an organisation whose clubs love a virtuous gesture but aren’t so hot on actually, you know, doing much about issues, does create mixed emotions �and here, I should make it clear that this does not relate to the fantastic work that their community arms do. Yes, it’s great that the message gets out there but are they really offering up anything more than a bit of public relations?

Racial Discrimination In Football

The football pitch is the place of the ultimate meritocracy. The clubs don’t care if you’re black, white or green if you can score the goal that wins the title or make the save that staves off relegation. But in 40 and more years of black footballers making their mark on the playing fields of England, it is realistic to believe that none but the merest handful have had the credentials to be managers and coaches? In a world where Alan Pardew and Mark Hughes keep getting work? Honestly?

And why is it that hardly any of the boardrooms of England have opened their doors to black men and women as directors? Go to the back offices of the majority of our football clubs, look at the administrators, the media, the accountants and see how many black faces you see. Precious few.

The only time you really see black faces away from the dressing room – when the kitchen doors open and the waiters and waitresses come out to serve on tables in the executive suites and boxes. That’s real symbolism for you and it makes this stance problematic. While the raising of awareness is good, getting out of the glasshouses wouldn’t hurt either.

Dave Bowler is the author of “The Magic of the Cup�series, the first two volumes of which are on sale here: http://www.curtis-sport.com/books

A couple of weeks ago, Manchester United and Arsenal were under the microscope, as we wondered if either club might think in terms of moving out their manager and swooping down for Max Allegri instead.

The dismal 1-1 draw the two played out at Old Trafford not long afterwards made it clear just how far both sides have fallen from the pinnacle and how far behind Liverpool and Manchester City they lag. Arsenal’s Emery earned some respite with a win over Bournemouth but Manchester United’s grim defeat at Newcastle only adds more fuel to those flames.

By Dave Bowler

Into that mix of misery, we now have to throw Tottenham Hotspur too. A couple of weeks back, you could accuse them of no more than just a sluggish start, perhaps a bit of a hangover from that Champions League defeat to Liverpool back in June. Not now though, not after the complete schooling they were given by Bayern Munich in their new, state-of-the-art stadium last week.

A 7-2 humbling, their worst ever defeat in Europe, followed by a 3-0 thumping at Brighton where they rarely even competed, suggests that things are not going to solved by a strong dose of Alka Seltzer.

In the context of that defeat, the fact that, a week earlier, they slipped out of the League Cup at Colchester United looks worse yet. Ordinarily that could have been shrugged off, one less competition to worry about etc. But given that the accepted wisdom both around the club â€?Harry Kane said so in a BBC interview at the start of the month – and the wider game is that this year, Spurs must win a trophy for the first time since 2008, that loss takes on greater significance.

Spurs Challenge

Given that on the evidence of the last couple of seasons, if they want to win the Premier League, they would now probably need to win 28 out of their remaining 30 games, so barring something quite miraculous, that competition is already beyond them.

The League Cup is gone too. Though they could â€?quite possibly will – still qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League, winning such a ferocious competition is always a very tall order. Which means, here in mid-October, with seven months of the season remaining, virtually all of Tottenham’s eggs are placed in the FA Cup shaped basket. That’s not how their brave new world was supposed to look.

Particularly not since even their hitherto expected top four finish looks a little less certain than it did too. Again, given the issues at Arsenal, United and Chelsea, Spurs could still come through, but even then, that’s the kind of consolation prize that Arsenal fans spent years berating Arsene Wenger for achieving.

Problems

Clearly all is not well at Tottenham, with Pochettino talking about players having different agendas and the squad lacking the togetherness of previous years. That much is evident, the sagas over Eriksen, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Rose et al having dragged through the summer without resolution.

That in itself is a reminder that however good or valuable a footballer is to you, if he genuinely wants out �rather than one who is just trying it on to get a better contract �get him gone, because little good has ever come anywhere from retaining an unhappy footballer.

It’s also a reminder that really good footballers are in short supply and, especially if you are a club on the way up, of how incredibly hard it is to keep hold of them because there is always a bigger club that can offer more money and medals right now.

Modric

Spurs found that out years ago with Luka Modric for instance, just as Leeds did it in the early years of the century, just as many other emerging teams have down the years. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool, Manchester United, Juventus or whoever is big at that moment will always be a more attractive option than a club trying to fight its way to the summit.

How many more years can they keep Harry Kane happy if they don’t give him the trophies he could likely collect in Barcelona, Milan, Munich or Turin?

The scale of the job facing Spurs and Pochettino should not be minimised. Looked at in any historical context, to take a club from being on the fringes of the top four in England to the final two in Europe was a huge achievement. But if getting there was tough, as the vultures circle, staying there is tougher.

New Stadium

Tottenham’s biggest problem, even including any internal unrest, is that it all looks a bit stale. The real genius of Sir Alex Ferguson in those imperious years at Old Trafford was the ruthlessness with which he would pick off those who no longer had the absolute focus and send them off elsewhere. Nobody was too big �Ince, Beckham, Keane, Van Nistelrooy, they were all put on their way when the time came, to be replaced by leaner, hungrier footballers to ensure that United kept on winning.

Spurs�inability to do that is in part the result of circumstance. The building of their new stadium has clearly choked off funds for new players in recent times and in that position, they were right to keep hold of the top players that they had.

But that has meant that over the last couple of years, there has been no new blood to stimulate things, bring fresh dimensions, increase competition. Spurs didn’t buy anyone last season and though there was more activity this summer, thus far only Tanguy NDombele has made any impression. The summer of 2019 is now looking like a catastrophically misjudged few months.

Stagnation

Pochettino has been working with pretty much the same 15 or 16 frontline players for three seasons now and while they have produced some of the best football seen in the Premier League in that time, familiarity can breed, if not contempt, then stagnation.

He was clearly keen to move more players on and bring fresh ones in this summer, recognising that need, but when Daniel Levy is in charge of the shop, he has a value for each incoming and outgoing. If those aren’t matched by the other club, the transfer doesn’t happen. That iron control has served Tottenham well in the past but perhaps this summer was the time to be a little more flexible.

There’s certainly the feeling that one or two players have passed their peak or are in need of a change of scene. Before his horrible injury at Brighton, Hugo Lloris, for instance, has been betraying the signs of many a World Cup winner of yore �once you’ve won the biggest trophy there is, how do you motivate yourself to just keep getting better and better? At 32, would it have been the moment to cash in on Jan Vertonghen?

Dier

Just what has happened to Eric Dier? What Spurs need is some pretty substantial surgery and it should have happened this summer. Thanks to the transfer windows, they are now eight months away from trying to do the bulk of that job again. This might be a painful season ahead, though paradoxically, complete concentration on the FA Cup in the new year might be their salvation.

Having had no real opportunity to freshen things up in two years, Pochettino deserves the opportunity to do so, to revitalise the Tottenham project and to try to keep them on the upward trajectory he has masterminded in his time at the helm. But unlike at Arsenal and Manchester United, the real question isn’t whether the club has got the right man. It’s whether he wants to tread water for a year before starting to climb the same mountain again.

By Dave Bowler

The rush to give Solskjaer the job full-time is starting to look indecently hasty as United have dropped out of the Champions League, the FA Cup and are only being kept in the race for the top four by virtue of the misadventures of Chelsea and Arsenal. But perhaps we need to look a little deeper for the root causes?

If we take Arsenal as our text for today, then possibly we can see just where Solskjaer’s problems lie. Removing Arsene Wenger from the Emirates has had virtually no impact this term, in the same way that employing Ole at United has, since the shine wore off, done nothing for them. Which brings us to the common denominator at both clubs, the clubs that dominated English football either side of the turn of the century �it’s their players, rather than their managers, that aren’t good enough.

Take this test. Put together a combined XI from Liverpool and Manchester City. Now, having done that, see if you think any player from United or Arsenal, on this season’s form, would get in it. That’s what the Premier League’s players did for the PFA and, in the side announced last week, only Paul Pogba did and that, surely, is down to him having his brief purple patch at around the time the votes were cast. You simply can’t argue with that dismissal of United’s â€?or Arsenal’s – footballers.

United Not Good Enough

The brutal truth was exposed in a comical exchange after the Manchester derby last week between Roy Keane and Gary Neville on Sky –  – where the two were violently agreeing with one another, Keane doing his best not to get up and strangle Neville in the process.

Keane argued that City wouldn’t be able to believe what an easy game it was for them, Neville saying that United’s performance was about as good as they can give at this point. Both are right and that, above all, sums up the scale of the task facing Solskjaer in the months ahead.

He’s got a dressing room full of players who simply aren’t good enough and which, even at their best, is miles behind Manchester City. That’s not to say that they don’t have good players. But if a club sees itself as the biggest and the best in the world �and if that isn’t Manchester United’s self image, then they’ve got even bigger problems than we think �good players aren’t good enough. They need world class players and lots of them.

Recruitment Woes

If you look at the United side that played City last week, it’s a pale shadow of the teams Sir Alex Ferguson had. Darmian, Smalling, Lindelof, Fred, Pereira, none of them Manchester United quality. Young is too old, Shaw has never yet recovered from that horrific leg break. Of those who should be somewhere near the right quality, Pogba and de Gea are performing way below their standard, Sanchez has been a disaster, Rashford, Lukaku and Lingard lack consistency.

Since the end of Fergie’s reign, the problem at United, year in, year out, has been atrocious recruitment, spending too much money on players who aren’t up to the mark. That has to end, and soon, if United are to get back up to the mark, but there seem precious few signs of it under Ed Woodward. Talk of a sporting director coming in is at least a start, but it’s a very, very long way back from here.

How far? Well, as Pep Guardiola said last week, City have raised the bar now to the stage where if you want to win the Premier League, you are going to have to hit the mid-90s at the very least in terms of points. In the post-Fergie era, United have averaged 70 over the last five seasons and, at best, can only better that by a single point this term – maybe Mourinho was right when he talked of last term’s 81 point haul as being one of his greatest achievements. That average leaves them about 25 points short of mounting a credible challenge.

Given that litany of failure, perhaps it’s time to throw some players under the bus rather than one manager after another?

By Dave Bowler

This is the first time ever that two sides have been dropped by April 2nd and only the second time two clubs have been relegated with five or more games to go, Ipswich and Leicester doing likewise in 1994/95.

That both should be so laughably, criminally awful, particularly in the case of Fulham who blew somewhere in the region of £100million on transfers to prepare them for the Premier League, only to endure the worst losing run since 1961/62 when they lost 11 on the trot â€?this current run is nine –  is something that should give cause for alarm, for it is proof positive that the gap between divisions is getting too big to bridge, certainly in any long-term sense.

Cardiff City

For while Cardiff will keep the mathematicians going for a few weeks yet, the likelihood is that the numbers will ultimately crunch them, and down they’ll go too. That will mean three of the last six teams to go up are on the way down again, with two of the others, Brighton and Newcastle, not too far above the trapdoor and only Wolves thriving, largely through spending incomprehensible amounts of money and having a “super agent�to “help�them in the transfer market.

You might say that it’s always been thus, that the newly promoted are often the soon to be relegated and that is indeed the case. Promotion for some is the pinnacle, their club too small and attracting too little investment to survive up a level for long.

That’s the case between all the leagues, for most clubs have a natural habitat where they mostly graze, the occasional triumph or disaster taking them away from the comfort zone for a year or two before they return.

Huddersfield And Fulham

But the way in which Huddersfield and Fulham have been so outrageously dismantled all season speaks to the fact that the £120million plus that each side gets in TV cash from the Premier League each year is growing the gap too much. Receive that for two or three years and you really should put yourself far above the madding crowd beneath. And if you don’t, your board wants sacking, never mind the manager.

Sadly, it doesn’t take much imagination to see putative promotion winners Norwich, Sheffield United or Leeds for instance having similarly nightmarish experiences of the top flight in the next year or two, before dropping back from whence they came, keeping the cycle on seemingly permanent repeat.

Meanwhile, in the Championship itself, finances are so tight that breaking the bank to try and salvage something through winning the jackpot of a year’s worth of being beaten to a pulp in the Premier League seems almost sensible, that’s how insane football finances have become.

But plenty have tried it, only to meet the consequences. Birmingham City have been docked nine points for being in breach of the profitability and sustainability regulations. Aston Villa are under surveillance for similar transgressions though, like Wolves before them, they might avoid punishment by the simple expedient of getting promoted before the investigations end, thereby removing themselves from EFL jurisdiction.

Bolton Wanderers

And then we have Bolton, most of whose troubles stem from actually being in the Premier League and spending next season’s money a year in advance simply to stay there, only to find that once they did take the drop, they didn’t have to run to stand still, they needed a Ferrari to do it. And they couldn’t afford one because they’d spent all the money. Irony’s a beautiful thing. Now, one of the great English clubs, a founder member of the Football League, stands on the brink of catastrophe.

If anything underlines that the concept of trickle down economics is garbage, it is football in England, especially since the transfer market was emasculated by the twin scalpels of the Bosman ruling and the arrival of the transfer windows.

Both have slashed transfer fees for lower division footballers, a market which has been further decimated by the fact that Premier League sides have so much money that they don’t need to spot and nurture talent any longer, they just go and get already developed players from the rest of Europe by paying the big money necessary. Consequently, there’s not much of that TV money doing any trickling anywhere near Rochdale or Barnsley these days.

The English pyramid is, quite simply, in crisis, a crisis masked by the riches and glamour of the top end of the Premier League. But when the entire EFL has broadcast income of £120million, the same total that each top flight team will receive all for itself, how could the system be anything but broken?

By Dave Bowler

Where, especially in the old world on this side of the Atlantic, once nationality was a very straightforward thing �French children born of French parents, English, German, Italian the same �such “purity�is now a thing of the past and a good thing too.

This is a global village, the only one we’ve got and a touch more internationalism and a bit less protectionism would be a good thing for us all, especially with the threats of climate change and resource scarcity that will engulf us in the next century.

It’s ironic then that that great bringer together of nations, international football, is starting to creak a little under the weight of those blurring national lines. Those simple late 19th century bloodlines are no longer the norm and football appears to be taking a very strange line on the consequences.

Nowadays, it isn’t that strange to have a child who is, let’s say, born in England to a German father and a Nigerian mother. And then go back a generation, back to the grandparents and that putative international goalscorer could be lining up for any one of maybe five nations that are laying claim to him or her.

Choices

That’s complex fare, but the answer is simple. The child chooses. You’d hope that choice would be based on a particular feeling for a nation but we must also be realistic and accept that in plenty of cases, that choice represents something of a second best. “I’m not going to be good enough for France. Ok, I’ll play for Egypt instead�

Whether that was ever the thinking of the youthful Declan Rice, who knows. Going down the grandparents route, from 16 onwards, he played for Ireland, through the youth levels and onto the senior side, for whom he played in three friendlies.

But such are the rules of the game, that did not irrevocably bind him to an Irish future, for he didn’t wear the green shirt in a competitive game. And in February this year, he chose to transfer his status and become available for England, saying, “This has been an extremely difficult decision. I consider myself to be of mixed nationality. I have equal respect for both England and Ireland…it is a personal decision I have made with my heart and my head�

Rules

That’s all fair enough, those are the rules and Rice has done nothing wrong in using them to become an England international. But the question is, should he have been given that chance? Certainly former Irish international Kevin Kilbane, himself born in England but the winner of a century of caps for Ireland, thinks not: “If you’re a “proud Englishman�then why play for us in the first place?�/p>

You can only assume it’s because Ireland asked first and that Rice maybe never saw himself in a shirt with the three lions on it. But once it became apparent that England were very interested indeed, things became more complicated. Born in England, a card carrying Londoner, it would be understandable if the pull of Gareth Southgate’s side was stronger.

And, on a purely logical level, playing for England is likely to see him playing in more major tournaments, play more often in the later stages of them and enjoying the commercial benefits thereof than if he were playing for Ireland. Nobody can blame Rice on any level for that choice.

But surely he should never have had the option, just as Wilfried Zaha or Diego Costa should not have had that chance.

Commitment

Surely the rules should be that once you make your international bed, you lie in it? And if you have to show patience, waiting for your preferred option when a different one comes calling first, so be it. For otherwise, as Rice will discover, there’s always going to be someone ready to question his commitment to the nation whenever he as a bad game for England. He might have got what he wanted, but I’m not sure that he’s ever going to be allowed to enjoy it and that’s a real shame.

That’s perhaps a slight, but wholly understandable, overstatement, for, in football grounds at least, we have yet to see the return to times when 5,000 at one would be chanting racial abuse at players. Instead, it is, at present, restricted to pathetic individuals but nonetheless, Collymore’s point is a sound one for within society, there is a move towards the polarisation that disfigured the 1970s.

Team Talk with Dave Bowler

Back then, you had mainstream politicians whipping up frenzy with forecasts that immigration would lead to “rivers of blood� sensationalist lies that played to the right wing. Football grounds then became recruiting grounds for the National Front and similar fascist loons looking to put the Great back into Britain again. Plus ça change as they might say today if they weren’t so rampantly xenophobic�/p>

Immigration is back on the agenda again in the wake of Brexit, albeit from different areas of the world this time, but that referendum wasn’t so much a vote as an opening of Pandora’s box, emboldening the racists to say the things they’ve been too ashamed to say for 20 years or more now. But now they’re back and this time they’ve got Twitter and Facebook to help them organise and spread their poison.

‘Just Banter’

We’re back in a world where knuckle scraping Neanderthals think it’s fine to throw bananas at black footballers. Where they can call Muslim footballers “shoe-bombers�and they pretend it’s just “banter� One where they can film themselves screaming racist abuse as a player takes a penalty and then think it’s fine to upload that to Twitter �have you had him delivered into the hands of the police yet @Jack? Where they can scream their mouth frothing bile at black players and think it’s ok.

One of those on the receiving end at the weekend, Raheem Sterling, said he could only laugh at it, that it’s no more than he expects from some people. But he went a bit further than that on his Instagram feed, and quite rightly. Sterling pointed in the direction of the elephant in the room, the one that never takes responsibility yet feeds more of this savagery than anything. The newspapers.

Raheem Sterling

He did it by pointing out the difference between two Manchester City youngsters who he knows well. When Phil Foden, an up and comer who has barely played, bought a mansion for his mother, he was doing the right thing and securing his future.

When Tosin Adarabioyo did precisely the same thing, it was a terrible indictment on society that a lad who had never played in the Premier League should do such a thing, conspicuously spending money he hadn’t earned. I’ll let you work out the respective skin colours of Foden and Adarabioyo.

Sterling knows what he’s talking about, having been on the receiving end of the Fourth Estate’s double standards, attacked for anything and everything they can think of. I don’t know Raheem Sterling, other than as a footballer.

English Desease

I don’t know if he’s a good bloke, a brat, a tireless donator to charity or somebody who lights cigarettes with five pound notes. But I do know that that is a) his own business and b) nothing to do with his skin colour. Saints and sinners, losers and winners, diligent and feckless, they claim their numbers from every race, religion, creed, orientation, nationality. None has a monopoly on the good nor the bad. But the media would like you to think they do.

Now that racism is back, British football is at a crossroads, just like the country. What used to be called the “English disease�of racist football violence looks to be edging back centre stage and that simply cannot be allowed, not now, not after so much progress has been made.

Media

The softly, softly approach isn’t going to do any longer. It’s time for one strike and you’re out. Anybody found to be racially abusing anyone �or being sexist or homophobic �they’re finished. Life ban. It is not acceptable, not under any circumstances, not at any time. We should get medieval on their asses.

And the same should go for our newspapers. Tyrone Mings has started by refusing to talk to radio station TalkSport after the way they responded to Sterling’s comments. But will we see that starting a trend? Football only reflects society and, with a Prime Minister who is desperately using immigration as a political football to try and hold her career together, it’s hard to be optimistic isn’t it?