Despite all the protestations, no-one here has evidenced why judging him to be guilty of the charges is 'reasonable'. Rape is a serious crime, he's been accused of rape, hence we must treat him as if he was guilty in order to demonstrate that we treat rape seriously, even if two investigations have indicated that the evidence as a whole points in his favour? Because behind the rhetoric flourishes or protestations, this is essentially the 'logic' being laid out. The fact is, none of us know, and to claim that we do - and to make claims for what the club or sport ought to do on the back of an dismissed allegation being taken as fact - is incredibly deceptive. Again, not a great basis for making claims about your right to pass judgement.
People state that his partner returning to him is inconclusive - indeed it it is. But so is the evidence pointing towards his guilt. Do you think the CPS frivolously dismissed this case, in the present climate and given the initially available audio-visual evidence, without legitimate grounds, even if this withdrawal can never meet some external standard for proving unequivocal innocence. If people are going to argue about this dismissal, then they at least need to acknowledge this was down to new evidence rather than simply a witness withdrawing.
Witnesses can be compelled to testify, at risk of being deemed in contempt of court, even if they don't want to. If it's in the 'public interest' then the PS will go ahead with a case even with a hostile or uncooperative witness: sure actual trained lawyers can confirm this . Omission of facts really doesn't testify to a commitment to scrupulousness or virtuousness. And if the absence of proof for his guilt 'exists', then he can only be judged according to established facts, in which case you're looking at training ground behaviour and personal ethics in his relationship.
The latter are things he's apologized for: if we are still to take those corroborated incidents as reasons for de facto exclusion from the sport then it becomes a conversation about thresholds of guilt as well as contrition, one which becomes less clear-cut, particularly given precedent. The sport has in very recent history brought back in people actually convicted of bodily assault or causing death by dangerous driving or a whole variety of offences (blackmail etc), and playing. A person's career can't be randomly made subject to social media's distortion of the ability to re-evaluate your perspective on facts or pre-rational instinctive responses to decontextualised audio. How those have been decontextualised, we can't be certain, although the former claimant has made informal statements about the images. For all of us, the rest is speculation. Outrage has its place as a motivating factor towards action but it can't be the guiding principle of society without seeing the latter descend into complete anarchy.
Whether he's innocent or guilty, it's irrelevant because none of us can know that. But lots of people, in lots of different ways, are essentially inverting the principle by which society generally operates when it functions properly (as well as by which the law formally operates ) which is assumption of innocence until conclusively proven guilty. Why? I'm sure there are many reasons - genuine personal experience; concern about ongoing misogyny; wanting a cause; some reasons are better intentioned, others more cynical. But at their worst these condemnations are horribly bad faith arguments which are actively defamatory, although obviously MG couldn't bring a case against tens of thousands of social media posters. I don't care about him returning to play for us; it's having to sign up to this caricature of justice and signing up to a falsehood about standards of proof and the putative ethical response of the basis of facts that haven't been proven etc.
I absolutely agree that football, despite all its cynicism and money -driveness, does have certain societal responsibilities, with clubs as representatives of communities. Lots of things have perverted that (having parasites like the Glazers be allowed to run things is one) and we deserve different ownership models across the sport,... but we can't just take or sublimate that frustration and create scapegoats out of players and attempt to wreck people's lives on the basis of that and call it 'doing what's right'...