Bobzilla

I'm not quite saying that. I'm saying the guy has put a truck load in to give us stability. I think he's in for about £40m so far, which is huge for someone who isn't actually a billionaire (although if he's the front end for an investment consortium there probably is as much again at least behind the vehicle). However, promotion is expensive - look at how much even a half hearted attempt has cost us over the last 3 years. It's only a £100m pay day if it costs you no more to run than the championship team that got there. And we all know that's not happening. In order for promotion to be worth it for him (and his backers), he needs control, not promises. So there is no point in him putting more good money in to push for it before we're, and he's, ready for it. If we get it based on our existing financial position, great. It means he's buying into a brand that CAN do it on their own, and his money is cementing that position. If we can't, great, because it gives him an even better bargaining position with D&M. In short, at this point, his interests are in ensuring our stability rather than pushing for us to get to the prem at a stretch this season. He won't sabotage, but I'd be surprised to see him bankroll. This year.

1 - He doesn't have £560m. At best he has an interest in investments which is worth £560m on a notional basis. I'm not saying he's brassic, but he does not have £560m under his matress. 2 - He is in the middle of negotiating a deal with two rather recalcitrant sellers. At the minute he's put money in to avoid banks disclosing on us. Until he's agreed a price and a timeline, he didn't want to be giving us a lifetime to promotion as that will push the price up for his ordinary share purchase. To illustrate, to get control as it stands, it might cost him £10m. To get control as a premier league club it might cost him £30-50m. I don't know whether that ever finds its way out of the club and into D&M's hands (I gather that MA`s takeover will be achieved by new subscription rather than share sale), but MA won't want to be giving £40m away for nothing. You don't make £560m by any measure by doing that.

I live 250 miles from carrow road. That's basically 5 hours each way. I bought a home membership because the only match i could watch that coincided with holidays was the Ipswich match, which I fully expected us to draw at best. And it meant at least one overnight in a hotel. I have an away membership and have been with my son to 6 league away games (would have been 7 if we didn't get Ipswich tickets), Liverpool, and will hopefully be getting tickets to Birmingham as well. So two tickets to the most expensive game in the calendar PLUS home membership to get them... What do I win?

Other clubs are available. I'm fairly sure you won't be missed by their letter answering department...

Would you bet your last £2 knowing you hadn't eaten in a week?

Having kicked the **** out of him early on in the first half without so much as a protest from the ref. Holmes was a dirty cheating **** yesterday.

What exactly are you going to do about it? What could any fanbase do? He realistically owns us anyway. His investment in us very significantly exceeds the net assets of the club (disregarding the difference between cost and market value of our squad).

Fair point and one I hope is true for him. Confidence is massive for a striker, but the problem with Idah is that he never seemed to grow in that confidence. He hit two in one of our earlier games (can’t remember which, Plymouth?) and I was hoping that would give him the confidence, but it fizzled pretty quickly. Which is a real shame.

I will concede you have a point here. They need to change the articles to make sure that they say ‘home membership’ now that they have split the membership.

Same here mate. I can’t get to home games because I live the other side of the country - 5 hour drive just to get here, so it was a stay overnight on Friday, back today for me (although I could have got back yesterday given the game time change). My son had no idea I had tickets until yesterday morning. Absolutely fantastic boys’ weekend for us.

He bottled the big calls. Ipswich had at least one red card that they narrowly avoided.

Perhaps sir can explain how you challenge for automatic when our strike force doesn’t get on the pitch? For everything anyone says about Idah, his goals were always opportunistic. Ian Rush without the luck, support and talent. I can’t remember a single goal opportunity he has MADE. I’ve seen him chase down a ball precisely once. I’ve seen him get into good crossing positions with his speed, but then not been able to deliver. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt but he has never been the player that we have needed in our team. I suspect that he needs lots and lots and lots of low fast crosses in the box, and we don’t get into enough wide positions to give him that. So without Barnes and Sargeant we were never going to be there. Even Alex Ferguson wouldn’t have got us there.

We don’t have the money. Seriously. This isn’t lack of ambition. This is being very far down a financial hole. We possibly can’t afford to get promoted, depending on what promotion salary increases look like.

Yes. Things are incredibly tight. We have 3 away games in the next 5 and we know our away form is not great. Sure, mathematically we should beat Wednesday and Birmingham, but those are two teams fighting for their Championship survival, so those will be TOUGH games, especially if Birmingham aren’t safe for the last game. It is in our hands - we just need to get better results than those below us (but isn’t that always the way) - but a top 6 should not be taken as a given. And not making the top 6 is not a reason to sack Wagner. We lost our goal scorer for 4 months, and we lost the big support man for a chunk of that period as well. Every team will struggle in those circumstances. And replacing a striker isn’t as simple as getting another good one in. You can spend big money and get in one who is good in his current team, but unless you support them in the same way there are no guarantees. And we currently can’t afford to get a finished product in.

I’m not sure I agree here. Absolutely, our natural subconscious mindset is one of prejudice. You look different so I don’t trust you. It’s a natural inbuilt reaction, and part of our survival as a species. We are still just caveman in suits. The difference between someone who has a prejudiced subconscious mindset and someone who is prejudiced, of whatever flavour, is the link between subconscious and conscious. If you can’t control those urges and engage your conscious brain to rethink your natural judgments and control what comes out of your mouth, you’re prejudiced. If you say racist stuff, you’re racist. Now that doesn’t mean he can’t become non-racist. He stops saying this sort of ****, and stops acting based on it. That’s the difference between a normal everyday person and someone who is racist.

I'll agree that if he's based his identification of those individuals based on specific knowledge of those individuals, it's not racist. I'd disagree with the last comment though. There are very few out and out conscious racists who are showing hate based on race. That's increasingly rare nowadays. The issue is subconscious bias, where observable facts about a community are applied to individual members of a community without reference to their individual facts and circumstances. That is by its very nature making a deciding about an individual based on observable characteristics. I.e. Prejudging the individual. Where that prejudgment is based on race, that is by definition racism. The fact that someone would make that judgment makes them racist. It's a different type of racism than outright hated based on race, but it is racism, and makes the person thinking in this way racist. He may not intend to be racist (and probably doesn't intend it based in subsequent behaviour) but he is, by definition, racist. He becomes not racist by spite realising where he is making judgments based on appearances and by not making those judgments, by controlling his subconscious judgments and changing his actual behaviour.

I’d say that a defamation case would be difficult. The loss of reputation isn’t there. The only person who has lost face in this is Webber himself. My understanding is that he hasn’t committed a criminal offence (not because of intention, as it’s often victim perspective that counts more than intention) but because there is no crime to attach the racism to. There’s no incitement to violence, no physical attack, nothing that is actually illegal. Just a very stupid, and racist, statement in an interview.

I couldn’t give a flying **** about what he’s said about sections of our fans in the past. I like him as a SD. He took us up twice. The fact that we came back down again immediately says more about the state of the game than it does about Stuart Webber. Absolutely, he should move on - ultimately his City career has ended in failure, but it’s been a pretty ****ing good career, and we’ve seen some of the best football played at Carrow Road ever (by us, not by the opposition) under his tenure. But none of that matters. What he said was undoubtedly prejudiced. It was taking a stereotype that in many cases is true, and applying it to individuals where it was not true, based on the colour of their skin. He judged those players and their background by the colour of their skin. Whether he meant to do it is actually a massive red herring. The fact that he didn’t mean to do it and STILL did it is proof positive that actually there is still an undercurrent of prejudice in this country - the fact that you’re defending him because he didn’t mean to is yet more evidence of it. Understanding the issues and how they affect different populations as a whole is fine. In fact, it’s laudable. Applying those generalisations to specific individuals is the very definition of prejudice. The fact that you think it’s OK is actually just evidence of your own prejudice. It’s horrifying, but sadly not surprising, to me that you not only don’t see it but won’t even listen to it.

I feel sorry for you mate. With views like that that would have been out of place 30 years ago, the world must be a very lonely place for you. That or you’ve surrounded yourself with similar bell ends.

So racism etc is totally fine up until the point it turns into violence? We killed that idea as being acceptable at least 20 years ago. As for a lot of footballers being black, exactly how many black players are there in our squad, out of what total number of players? In north London clubs there are a lot of black players. The rest of football? Not so much... Norwich? **** all.

More falling down a hole. Are you telling me that in order for prejudice to be bad, there has to be ill intent? That it’s an issue of intention and not outcome? Go read up on the impact of subconscious bias and then come back for an adult conversation. Yours, Someone who’s actually been the victim of subconscious bias, and trust me, it sucks just as much as conscious and deliberate bias.

Only with a bit of background knowledge…

No. I’m telling you that you know **** all about things you’ve never experienced. I’m telling you that you are disagreeing with experts. And I’m telling you that you’ve crossed the line from pig ignorant to just plain offensive.

My God this thread is utterly depressing. Let’s just make a few points clear. Saying that people with lower levels of life chances often end up in a life of crime is accurate. Saying that this very often comes down to money is accurate. Saying that this is often a racial issue is accurate - this highlights the issue of intergenerational wealth, and how social mobility is a multi-generational issue that doesn’t get fixed in one person’s lifetime. The disadvantage here is long standing. None of the above is racist yet. The racist bit is by linking all of this to specific individuals. The attitude of ‘lets apply all of this accurate profiling to an individual to make a judgement about that person and his situation by reference to a set of general criteria and a general statement about the general group they belong to. If he’d have talked about helping young black players in disadvantaged areas from a life of crime because of the disadvantages they often suffer because of institutional racism and the issue of inter-generational wealth and how that impacts on life chances, that would have been fine. If he’d referenced a black player that specifically had that issue (say, Jermaine Pennant, for instance), that would have been fine. BUT HE DIDN’T. He referenced 5 black players, two of whose families have already come out and said ‘they haven’t had those disadvantages. They had a stable background and lived in decent areas.’ In other words, ‘you’ve just racially profiled my kid’. And they’re right. I don’t blame people for not immediately recognising this as racism - many people are ignorant as to what discrimination actually looks like. However, it is deeply disappointing to have it pointed out to them and for them to still be arguing that it’s just clumsy, not racism. It’s proof positive that we’re still not winning the war against discrimination. As a disabled person, that leaves me pretty despondent.

That’s lovely. However, the guys’ family have called it out as racist. Who do you think is the better judge of what is and isn’t racist? The people that have to deal with it day in day out or you?