I'm not sure anyone has accused Neville of being a racist or in any way created racists overnight with his rants. However, he did get over emotional and used some words as if Pogba had committed treason. He needs to chill and not shoot off his mouth without knowing the facts. He had to change tact once Ole was interviewed.
Gary Neville
- Thread starter jymufc20
- Start date
Jesus wept
I've been mostly on that thread all day and have posted numerous times. If anyone had accused Neville being a racist we would have had a reported post and the culprit warned.
There are many creating a narrative that racists on the internet are emboldened because of something Gary Neville said. I think that's absurd and a sly accusation towards Neville.
People of importance and a stage do have to be careful about every word when they speak. I'm sure you'll admit Mr Trump and his ilk embolden racists.
Trump does.
Neville is not Trump in any way, shape or form and doesn't have the scale or contextual personal history. And IMO, he has done nothing wrong.
Last edited:
I'm not saying or even implying Neville is anything like Trump. I'm just saying people of importance and with a stage matters what they say and people get influenced. Words accusing Pogba of treachery do not befit a pundit, especially who's been a United fan and player all his life. This is not even the first time he has been accusing of Pogba and then backtracking.
I'm no Pogba fanboy. If he leaves tomorrow I'll not wink. However, he is very important to the club being our best player and fans such as Neville should be defending him rather than throwing him under the bus at every opportunity. This just trying to appease the club opponents trying to prove how he is such a balanced and objective pundit.
Last edited:
I think Neville is starting to lose his mind a bit. First it's united winning the league before Lfc as if it's set in stone. Then it's Lfc are going to lose Salah within the year. That's all good and expected from him being an ex manc and all. But now now attacking his own players and calling Pogba out seems a bit scatterbrained. In his own words "something is just not right" but with him nothing else. united looked very good yesterday and have had a really good start to the season. I don't know why he would be unhappy with that.
Agreed, we have a horrible fan base at times and the caf really highlights it.
Criticised him for what exactly?
The only thing he had to criticise him about would be not scoring a penalty. Which in itself is ridiculous, nobody gets criticised for that, especially by an ex-pro, unless again they want to make some point about a ‘silly run-up’ (here, ‘silly’ in modern football is anything that isn’t from my background and wasn’t seen under Fergie or Shankly - see ‘silly’ dancing, haircuts, jewellery etc).
Beyond that, he had no justifiable reason to be criticising Pogba at all, yet he found a way to.
Then people should accuse Neville of being a crap pundit and a terrible fan, not these craven and sly accusations (others, not you) of enabling and emboldening racists. The racist abuse is disgusting and I know how it feels to receive such. But linking that to Neville is not on.
On Pogba, I think the onus is now upon him to prove he is worthy of our support. He is 'thrown under the bus' because of his own behaviours and inabilities. Purely footballing linked criticism has merit, is valid and deserved.
Yesterdays criticism was about taking the penalty off Rashford. Didn't hear much else mentioned.
Last edited:
Sad thing is when you are a pundit you have to keep flapping your jaw even when you have nothing to say and if you can get angry doing it then that gets attention; Flip the coin and he scores and then what does Neville and Carragher talk about........Pathetic!
Further proof of Nevs severe twattery with regards to the penalty situation.
The way he laid in to Pogba and the team at length for a solid 5-10 minutes straight after the whistle, using all sorts of drastic language, and with barely a nod to any other facet of the game good or bad, was just so poorly judged from Nev. He really went down in my valuation.
It’s obvious at this point he has a vendetta against Pogba, whilst I’m not Paul’s biggest fan during his stint at the club thus far, I can appreciate he doesn’t deserve the level of stick he’s getting from mugs like Gaz on Sky and Brexit Barry on Twitter.
You must have lost your mind. ‘The onus is on his to prove he is worthy of our support’ all footballing criticism has ‘merit’ and he is ‘criticised due to his inabilities’? So how does he earn your support exactly? By ensuring the keeper doesn’t save a pen? His ‘inability’ justifies his constant criticism? This is a player who could walk into most teams in the world.
Anyway, I accept that we play in England, and therefore, footballing ideology is a certain way. I see people praising guys with far less ability because they run around, and never suggest that they could leave United (probably because their options would not be Real Madrid and Juventus if they did!). Pogba doesn’t deserve to have every misplaced pass or poor touch counted and obsessed over the way he does. For a footballer as good as he, he is massively over-criticised. As an example, Christian Eriksen, who is not as good as Pogba, is lauded by the football world in this country. He performs a similar role, but not as good as Pogba. He’s referred to as one of Spurs’ world-class players, and one of the best in the league (which he is), but the point is, he is never ever discussed from the perspective of what he does not or cannot do. There are loads of things Pogba can and does do regularly that he can’t. And in their currency of goals and assists, he falls behind to. I see many games of his where he does not effect the game. However, if you asked a Sky panel, or the likes of Merson ‘if you were building a team, who would you rather, Eriksen or Pogba?’, I suspect they will unanimously say Eriksen.
I cannot help but think there are some racial issues deep rooted in the obsession with Pogba. That doesn’t mean everyone is racist either, but many will dismiss it as nonsense, but I think largely because they have o idea what it’s like or have never been in such a position. There is something about Pogba that automatically clashes with ‘traditional’ ideals here. If you ask Real or Juventus the same question of ‘if you were building a team, who would you rather’, they would say Pogba over Eriksen every day. Outside of Britain he is respected and appreciated more. Here, I get the impression that he is looked at the way a lot of white folk would look at Stormzy or any other rapper. They are just not from the same world, and there’s some level of lack of understanding and condescension towards his expression.
Raheem Sterling was going down a similar road in this country, and he’s even English, before he directly called the media out on their agenda. Notably, there was no massive rebuttal from the press either, it was as if he held up a mirror to them and they realised how they had probably unknowingly been picking on him. Since then they have been licking his arse and he’s man of the year. I’d love Pogba to do something similar, because their agenda has gotten out of hand.
It isn’t simply about skin colour either. Gary Neville, for example, is not a ‘racist’ I believe. But I don’t think he gets off the hook that easily either. I’ve seen many on this forum all day come out and mock any implication that there is anything racial in Neville’s attitude towards Pogba. There is to me. Neville doesn’t dislike black people I don’t think, but he has what is probably an subconscious dislike for things that can probably be summarised as ‘British values’ in football. And Pogba is anything but. For instance, he like N’golo Kanté, as both on and off the pitch, he embodies what he is familiar with and has grown up to believe is the ‘right way’. That isn’t ‘racism’ per se, but it will continue to rear its head and I think fundamentally, Pogba is ‘different’ to him.
You speak about ability, but Pogba is a far better footballer than he ever was. He is also far better than many players he seems to like.
Spot on!
Spot on again!
I think it should be two players so goal keepers aren't prepared for just one
Disregarding the actual penalty incident which has been blown WAY out of proportion, as a fan Gary it's probably not a good idea to slate your best player who has implied that he wants to leave and on whom we rely on almost single-handedly to be the creative force of this time.
I'm not a 'Pogba fanboy' and I've hardly been blown away by his consistency whilst he's been here but it's pretty obvious this clubs NEEDS Pogba to play well this season if we have any chance of top 4/trophies. Slagging him off at an early stage in the season (especially when his level of effort has been decent) seems counter-productive and doesn't help the atmosphere around the club.
I'm not a 'Pogba fanboy' and I've hardly been blown away by his consistency whilst he's been here but it's pretty obvious this clubs NEEDS Pogba to play well this season if we have any chance of top 4/trophies. Slagging him off at an early stage in the season (especially when his level of effort has been decent) seems counter-productive and doesn't help the atmosphere around the club.
Ive seen you and some other voice this sentiment so i'll reply here for that. People's opinions aren't truly their own opinions, brought about through their own unadulterated volition. Their opinions are a concoction of opinions they hear/see/witness over and over again in their environment. A child doesn't have an opinion on something until the environment conditions the child into having one.
In much the same way, if someone is getting slandered every weekend for doing X/Y/Z wrong, being a virus, bad influence, social media star, doesn't care about man utd etc, a person over time becomes conditioned to think a certain way about an individual. Now a random person who watches and listens this smear campaign becomes conditioned over time to have their opinion slanted and twisted. That is how opinions form. You might think you formed your own opinions but you really didn't, the environment controls you.
Now the point of all that is to show that constantly slating of pogba, whilst not racist by Neville creates an environment where Pogba is seen as, for lack of a better term, the 'bad guy'. When a random redneck racist cnut see's this environment, they are emboldened to speak/put into action their racist views as this environment allows them to speak. They don't feel out of place as this is ok to be said to the 'bad guy'
I haven't read the whole thread but from what i've read, no one has accused Neville of being racist, they've accused him for creating an environment where racist wankers felt it was ok to speak out (More than usual). This sort of thing occurs throughout humanity and just because a person can't see it themselves, doesn't mean it isnt present. It's basic Behavioural Psychology and is discussed in the Psych Ward rounds in Med school.
Completely agree.
We all are critical of Pogba when he doesn't peform, but Neville has clear biases which clearly come across in many of his views, and I don't think that's befitting of a popular 'pundit' whose voice matters. I don't think it's a race issue with Neville and Pogba. Same as it wasn't with Scholes and Pogba. I just think they're old fashioned footballers and Neville in particular is extremely biased towards certain types (or sometimes nationalities), which reflects on him pretty poorly. I am all for free speech, and as with Scholes he's allowed to voice his views.
But I'm beginning to feel Pogba gets a very very harsh deal from the English media and our own ex players are possibly the worst of the lot in this regard. He actually gets more support from many rival team ex players than our own.
You do know that Rashford after the Chelsea match said there are 4-5 penalty takers right? Why are you trying to make it seem like Pogba was out of line and Ole was simply covering for him? If that were true, why on earth would Rashford have said what he said a week before this whole drama ensued?
It's the simplest retort to your argument.
And that's different from the argument "should a top club have 1 penalty taker?" That's a reasonable take that most would agree with. I just have no idea why you're sneaking in that Pogba bit just to make him out as some bad guy.
It's all on twitter as far as I know and not here. But because people talked about it here, some people think posters are accusing him of being racist. It's ridiculous.
I have 2 words for you- Ron Atkinson
Just to explain to you, the reason that no-one in the media highlighted this is because it was assumed that Rashford would be taking penalties from then on, and that he'd diplomatically said this in order to protect Pogba, who doesn't have a great record with penalties, and had therefore been taken off them. It was also assumed that if United were awarded a penalty in future games that Rashford would take them, if he was on the field of play. And it was further assumed that there wouldn't be an ongoing on-field debate over who would take every penalty from then on.
That's why it's being highlighted now because Pogba taking the ball from Rashford and demanding to take the penalty, which he did, was a selfish act, cost the team two points, made absolutely no sense, and forced Solskjaer to give an absurd explanation for why it had happened to the media, an explanation that makes him look weak and ridiculous. I haven't seen a single person commenting in the media who has said anything else. This thread is about Neville, but Carragher said exactly the same thing, as did everyone else commenting, as did many, and I would say the vast majority of, United fans.
It's only weird apologists for Paul Pogba who think and say otherwise. And the criticism of Pogba has nothing to do with an 'agenda'. This is just a puerile argument. Neville already made similarly strong criticisms of Mirallas when he did the same thing with Leighton Baines. Did he have some sort of 'agenda' against a nondescript Belgian winger who played for Everton? No, he just knows that it's unprofessional and stupid for Pogba to decide that he fancies taking a penalty because he's confident, and he knows it's weak management to allow this to happen, and he knows that it makes the team look ridiculous. And everyone should know that it cost United two points that they can ill afford to concede.
Frankly, it's weird that some people are so enamoured with Paul Pogba, for some bizarre reason, that they wish to pretend that having an ongoing on-field debate on who feels like taking a penalty every time that you're awarded one, in a struggling team that desperately needs to improve, is normal. Or even desirable!
Are we still talking about that bloody penalty?
Inexperienced team, inexperienced manager, will learn from mistakes, won't happen again.
Fair play to Ole for making himself the fall guy publicly, can be assured behind closed doors he wasn't happy.
Next.
Inexperienced team, inexperienced manager, will learn from mistakes, won't happen again.
Fair play to Ole for making himself the fall guy publicly, can be assured behind closed doors he wasn't happy.
Next.
Actually, no it wasn't. Rashford straight after the Chelsea game said "there is no set penalty taker, it's just whoever wants it and feels confident at the time, it can be either me or Paul".
He literally set the record straight after that, as Sky asked why Pogba wasn't taking it. To see Pogba take the next one was of no surprise.
Clearly though Neville hasn't done his research.
So many absurd assumptions you’re portraying here to support your opinion. Your whole argument is based on assumptions.
You assumed, despite conversation at the Chelsea game on the pitch between Rashford and pogba that it had already been decided Rashford was the penalty taker. You assume that there was an absurd charade made up by the players and managers to protect Pogba, you assumed everybody knew that? You assumed Rashfords version of events is a lie so that you can then assume that actually it’s Pogba who’s demanded to take a penalty he had no right to take....despite the conversation between the same two players as the Chelsea game being very short and agreeable.
I mean if I were a courtroom judge I’d laugh you out of the building.
You write a big essay without ever actually addressing the original point. Pogba is the designated penalty taker at Man Utd, he was for the entirety of last season. Just because a season starts fresh, that does not mean team changes set-piece takers unless they have signed a specialist one at that. Your entire argument rests on assumptions which you made on basis of one week of events which unfolded versus Chelsea. This is despite, me clearly breaking it down to you, that Pogba is the one who takes penalties at Man Utd, and if anyone was selfish, it was Rashford, who on the occasion, stepped up to take the penalty after having a brief discussion with designated taker in Pogba. His words post match weren't 'diplomatic' to 'protect' Pogba, this is again you conjuring a narrative out of your arse to paint Pogba in poor light which @In Rainbows has also highlighted.
Once again, you're in the wrong. Solksjaer gave this 'absurd explanation' last week itself, that we have number of penalty takers in the squad who'll figure it out amongst themselves on pitch. He was simply playing along with what Rashford said in the media. But you clearly know this, others have pointed that to you including @Rado_N couple of pages back whom you failed to respond to.
Of course, you have an agenda. That's the reason why I quoted the posts where in midst of this take you wrote about Pogba being 'selfish', 'being the big star'. Even in your imaginary dressing down which Ole should've given to Pogba, has Ole calling him out on 'how much you want to be the centre of attention'. Do no take us for idiots, there's plenty in your post which me and many others agree with such as Solksajers' weak management but if you're going to slide in snide remarks about a player just because you don't like him then you're going to be called out on your bullshit, painting me and others as 'weird apologists' won't change that.
No one has ever said that it's a desirable scenario, like any strong manager he should've cleared it up post-match. But, given this has been blown out of proportion, I expect it to be cleared by the weekend anyway.
Well put.
Last edited:
He was fresh of breath air when he was criticizing other teams and their players. But when he does to Man Utd players he is a traitor. Fans are all the same. They hate seeing an ex legend call out the team when they are down. Pogba took the pen from rashford and missed it. Offcourse marcus or ole is gonna downplay it. But one thing is clear if pogba takes another pen while rashford is on the pitch I will be shocked
One thing for certain. I NEVER want Gary Neville as manager or assistant at Man Utd and if he runs for the roles, we should do a fan poll and vote no.
Grow up.
This is nonsense.
https://instatsport.com/football/article/penalty_research
Huge research into pens over the last 10 years. Left footers have a marginally better conversion rate, however it is so minimal that what foot a player is means nothing really.
The sum of Nevilles input to the racism in football debate was a short bit he did at the height of the Sterling abuse, in which he essentially decided that as a middle aged white man it’s not his place to have an opinion on it, and that when he was a player for England racist abuse to the black players was just one of those things. It’s definitely a topic he’s chosen to hold back on.
Whats the background story? Never heard of these accusations
When Jose was sacked, Pogba (or his management team) tweeted some pic, which was then confirmed by Adidas as rescheduled tweet for marketing. Neville called it as nonsense and said Pogba knew what he was doing and went on a rant.
Rashford and Ole, I think it's regarding the designated penalty taker. Both said 2 of them are designated penalty takers but Neville went on a rant on how Pogba took the penalty from Rashford and all that nonsense.
No you
Interesting to imagine the trending debate if Pogba had simply scored the penalty (not a particularly bad one if we're honest). Success having many fathers and all that...
Even if Pogba scored Neville would still have found a way to criticise him, he clearly has it in for him and won’t be happy until he’s hounded out of the club.