Don't know why I clicked to read this, but said party was back in June before what I guess was prelimary hearing. Sun headline mis-leading shock!
Let us know if you make it in there one day. I'll be the one in sandals, throwing petals over everyone and singing "Bring me sunshine"
Sunderland chief executive Margaret Byrne has resigned following the Adam Johnson child abuse case. Winger Johnson, 28, faces a jail sentence after being found guilty of sexual activity with a 15-year-old. Sunderland have been criticised for allowing the England international to continue playing after his arrest. Byrne said she recognised that her decision to allow Johnson to continue to play for the club "was a serious mistake". http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35757828
It is always a hard decision as you have to be careful not to prejudice a case as he said he was going to plead innocent. Perhaps gardening leave would have been the answer. BTW, his sister is asking people to use the picture of Johnson with his daughter in tweets to give him support. She does know he pleaded guilty to two crimes, doesn't she? And using his daughter's picture (as Johnson has) is pretty low as well.
Well, unusually for me, I don't consider there to be any shades of grey in this one. He was innocent until the second he pleaded guilty so there was no need to suspend him before that moment. "I accept that Mr Johnson should not have been permitted to play again, irrespective of what he was going to plead" is counter to a basic tenet of the law, namely that he was innocent until either he pleads guilty or he has been tried and proven guilty. Utterly ridiculous. Vin
I'm still not clear from that whether he told her what he had done, as suggested in his trial, but was pleading not guilty. It always seems to say we didn't know he was going to change his plea. The question surely is what did he tell her he had done not what is he going to plea? If they were told, they were wrong to play him irrespective of his plea. Gardening leave/ suspension would seem to have been more appropriate. It's up to the court to find him guilty or not but even if found innocent surely his conduct (if they knew) was not good enough for the club. They obviously would have to wait for the trial outcome before taking any action within the club.
The problem with starting to drag the date at which someone should be suspended is that it's a slippery slope. My prediction is that within the next five years a team will be undergoing trial by media over someone not being suspended because the Police were in the process of investigating an accusation. The press has a madly holier-than-thou fixation. Vin
Gardening leave (saying he was being given time to concentrate on the case) would have been appropriate. Carrying on playing him was suggesting that they believed him and not his victim. I know she wasn't identified, but a lot of people knew who she was. The club was validating him. Paying him but not playing him was the correct option.
I don't want to sound fixated but I can't begin to say how much I disagree with this. It's not a matter of the club validating him or suggesting that they believed him. He was innocent until he pleaded guilty. It's one of the few things that is truly black and white in my world view and it dismays me that "innocent until proven guilty" has been eroded (largely by the media's need to show their high moral values) until the public has accepted that it doesn't matter. It's one of the bastions of law and it's vital. I've said this enough so I'll stop now. Vin
