Originally Posted by carefree_blue:
“No we're not talking about an on field incident, but we are talking about the FA and how they tend to work. You said that apologies are sometimes taken into consideration, so perhaps you can give an example of an off the field incident where this has been the case?
The punishment in previous cases is a difficult one. There's been homophobic tweets before this came to light, but not quite at the same extremity of this. So that would make a case for a bigger punishment this time around.
The punishment should have nothing to do with appeasing football fans, it should be to punish him for his actions, as a deterrent to others and showing that the FA are serious about tackling homophobia.
For what it's worth I agree that everything needs to be weighed up before determining the punishment but then if you're going to snipe at codeblue's suggestion then I think you should at least have some idea yourself of what you think would be more suitable.”
Until we have all the information and decide how to deal with historic social media issue I don't think we should come up with a punishment.
Punish who? That's the problem here, Unless we are saying people cannot change and their views are set in stone that person might not be punishable. If he had said the comments last week its more of a simple issue or do we hold him as an example (don't have a problem with that if honest).
We are setting a precedent here for historic social media posts and when dealing with historic issues we have to tread very carefully.
There has never been a case like this before, Its new ground so we cannot just look at if from a FA issue but have to look at society in general and how we arrive at punishments has to be looked at in the same way and the persons attitude today and their remorse is often taken into account.
Are we saying with a 9 match ban that we as a sport do not accept that a person can change? Or their mistakes will follow you around for 4/5/6/7/8 etc etc etc years. It not just how we punish this one case but how we punish further cases (which I am sure will happen). If in 5 years time we find a player has said something similar today when everyone should be more aware of social media as we do in this case?
I just think at the moment we are looking at a massive issue in a black/white way and need to tread very slowly.