Andre Gray..

[Max]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/37169558

Charged by the FA.

Oh goody, we can find out if telling gay people to burn and die is a more or less serious offence than biting someone.

 

[G-Dragon]

Oh goody, we can find out if telling gay people to burn and die is a more or less serious offence than biting someone.

Agreed. I would say at least 7 game ban. Reminds me to take him out of my 1FF. Thnx for the points Gray.

 

[Nilsson]

http://www.thefa.com/news/governance/2016/sep/andre-gray-burnley-four-match-suspension

Banned for 4 matches, ludicrous.

 

[Super_horns]

Good news for us as he would have scored on Monday!

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

Why is it "ludicrous"? Four games would seem to be in keeping with the sort of ban that one might expect for this kind of offence. The only mitigating factor is the passage of time and even then I'm not sure it's a terribly convincing defence when it comes to comments that are as unambiguously awful as Gray's. I might be inclined to be rather more sympathetic were he a kid but four years puts Gray at 21 - i.e. very much old enough to know better. Besides, this seems to me to be the nature of the social media beast - if you put something out there in the public domain there's always a good chance it'll come back to haunt you. The best remedy is to use the platform responsibly. Better for the FA to take retrospective action than it is to simply ignore tweets that incite hatred. Presumably the player and club agree given that they've accepted the ban...

 

[ValeMouth]

This does set a precedent though. Will the FA act upon all offensive tweets with similar bans? Right, I'm off to dig through a load of Stoke players' twitter accounts.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

There are numerous examples of players having been banned for social media comments so it very much doesn't set a precedent.

 

[ValeMouth]

I don't remember any bans being handed out for tweets from 4 years ago though Pineapple. Can imagine a fair few premiership players frantically going through their twitter accounts and deleting anything slightly iffy tonight.

 

[ThisTinpotLeague]

I don't remember any bans being handed out for tweets from 4 years ago though Pineapple. Can imagine a fair few premiership players frantically going through their twitter accounts and deleting anything slightly iffy tonight.

If we are talking about the sort of players who might have anything to worry about then I really think you overestimate how much a four game ban might bother them.

 

[Super_horns]

A fine does nothing for a footballer now so guess they do feel Gray needs a ban to ensure he learns his lesson.

 

[starry]

Gray isn't punished, the team is for remarks made well before he even joined them. It's a joke really. Can't believe twitter is now thought so important by some people, most of the stuff posted on it is crap anyway. People talk all kinds of crap. You may as well ban people for youtube comments as well then. What punishment happens to people who aren't professional footballers? Oh yeh, people just ignore it.

I can't help but think they are acting like this because Burnley are only thought small fry.

 

[Nilsson]

Why is it "ludicrous"?

Just seems totally unnecessary to punish a football club for some offensive 'tweets' from 4 years ago, when the 'tweeter' didn't have the responsibilities of a pro footballer and by his own admission was a bit of a waster at that time, he deserves pity for ever 'tweeting' such nonsense and credit for using his talent to turn his life around.

And if we're punishing footballers for old tweets I think the FA should take a look at a certain Wayne Rooney, he posted some seriously deplorable stuff back in the day.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

Nah, "@piersmorgan shut up u egg", is enough to earn him a reprieve in my book.

 

[Liam_SWFC]

Feel a bit for Gray with this, yeah he should keep his opinions on homosexuals to himself but what sad tosser went through 4 years worth of tweets to find that.

 

[silvergull]

The biggest part that worries me is that when the tweets were made (or at least the first set) The FA had absolutely no power to punish for so,etching written on Twitter. That was only so,Ethan that came in 6 months later or so.

So as awful as his comments were, something doesn't feel right about being punished retrospectively for something that wasn't punishable at the time.