Morals clause......

Well the video that was released wasn’t very flattering was it…

Talented footballer. Terrible human being.

I really don’t like abusive people so it’s a tough one for me. Would he be worse not following a career of football and spiral into violence or does his position allow him to continue with the same type of behaviour that got him into trouble to start with.

This I am leaving to a therapist.

Chicago: wary.

Within our society's legal framework, the guy has not been proven to have done wrong. It is right to uphold the decisions made by our society's rules, Greenwood should go about his career as a free man. Any alternative gives power to the mob, whoever they are.

Society now needs to look at the case and see what we can learn from it. How can we improve our legal framework? Why was that video insufficient evidence? How do we deal with situations where evidence like that is leaked leading to the mob convicting the unconvicted in public opinion?

Would I want him at Forest? Any job hire involves an element of "do we want this personality in the office?" I'd hope the club would decide his face doesn't fit, but that is the club's decision, not mine, and now not society's.

There will likely be some sort of clause in his player contract about player integrity or conduct prejudicial to the interests of the game. Breaches of those sorts of clauses can be informed by the criminal standard of proof, but don't require proof to that standard.

Yes, being found guilty of a criminal offence and doing something which amounts to grounds for dismissal from your employment are quite distinct things. You can be fairly sacked for all sorts of things which are well short of criminal conduct, including (probably) being the subject of a recording which is made public and appears to shows you in a deeply unedifying light. But it's even simpler than that: if Man U decide they don't want him on a commercial or reputational basis because it would be too controversial or because simply it is better for him and the club that he continues his career elsewhere, they can just pay off his contract and release him or sell him. That would seem to be the simplest thing to do.

In cases like this football (and any elite sport) has to be separated from a "normal" job. Everyone has a right work, not everyone has a right to participate in elite sport. Tell him to fuck off to Tescos.

As Tricky says, the case shines a light on the justice system. Would you advise someone victim of assault to pursue the case, given the grief the victim is put through by the justice system?

Manchester United are entitled to have different standards to the courts and prosecution service. The fact that a person isn’t convicted of a criminal offence, which necessarily bears a very high burden, doesn’t make any difference.

He should be entitled to go about his life unencumbered by the boot of the state and with all the rights and freedoms available to the rest of us. However he has no right to be a professional footballer, and the privileges that come with that particular job come with strings attached.. one of which is that if you end up is his position then, fair or not, you’re kinda fucked. Sucks for him if he did nothing wrong.

He is free to bring any actions against clubs who refuse to employ him where he feels doing so is in breach of some right he possesses, albeit that his status as a person accused, but not convicted, of a violent crime does not, to my knowledge, put him in any protected class. He is also free to enforce any contract he believes is being unfairly breached.

Have you listened to the audio? It's horrific. There's no real doubt about whether he did anything wrong. If I was the girls dad I'd have certainly done everything I can to stop my daughter being anywhere near him for the rest of her life. I can't fathom what is going on in her head or in her families that they are now together.

As I understand it, the victim is now marrying him, carrying his child and, understandably, reluctant to testify against him any more. Under those circumstances, and in this case, I'm not sure the justice system is the problem.

I haven’t listened but so believe you, and her. The comment was meant as more of a general thing than the way I wrote it made it sound.

My comment was more general than specific to this case.

As valid this all is as a discussion about a tough issue.. let’s not frame the allegation like you would if he’d been accused of nicking cars or selling weed to sixth-formers.

There’s a lot of very good research out there that should make us, as a society, serious reassess how we respond to people who commit offences when they are young (the tldr of it is that we’re dumb as shit and don’t fully understand consequences until we’re about 30) but when it comes to what he was accused of.. his age doesn’t really come into it and isn’t any kind of mitigating factor.

Most types of offending drop off once people get to aged 30. Domestic violence.. not so much.

We should expect the criminal justice system, the immense power of the state, to be really fucking careful about who it chooses to go after and punish. Better 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent man is jailed or whatever.

We do not have to hold ourselves as individuals, or even as a group, to that standard. We do not have to hold Manchester United, or professional football, to that standard. Indeed, we should not. If we do then we effectively put even more power in the hands of the state (which cannot generally be trusted to exercise it well) and diminish out own. I’m not going to hang out with rapists just because most of them don’t get convicted. And I’m going to err on allowing employers to make their own moral calls wherever the law allows it.