West Midlands Police Chief Constable Should beSacked......

[Ablondiebutagoody]

..... for using fake evidence to justify the ban on Jewish fans from the Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv match last year. When in reality, the threat was towards those fans from local anti-semites and he just couldn't be arsed to protect them.

I do agree he needs to go, after all the buck stops with him. But, I also have a little sympathy for him, in the light of extreme pressure from ' community leaders ' and local mps, what was he to do? All of it is wrong. I fear he'll get the sack or resign, and everyone will be happy to sweep it under the rug, but until the bigger issue of mob rule and pandering to the demands of one section of society is addressed, nothing truly will change.

So you'd be in favour of banning other groups known for bad behaviour?

Ban Liverpool or Chelsea supporters from away games?

Ban Roma supporters?

Or do you do what Birmingham should have done and put proper precautions and controls and resources in place to reduce potential problems??

I can understand you having a degree of sympathy given the pressure. However, those accepting high office (and I'm sure, the remuneration package to match) should see the integrity to apply the law "without fear or favour".

They should not be caving the the euphemistically named community leaders, and if they feel political pressure they should be slapping it down and reporting concerns to the home office. If they haven't the cajones to do that, fair play, I'm not sure I would, but for the love of god don't accept high office. The role of Chief Constable is not for you.

I agree. The police oath is "without fear or favour" and that philosophy has long gone. The police should act on a "fact based" methodology, and that shouldn't be influenced by ethnicity, race, etc. It's bad enough that the police give a lot of "freedom" to certain groups such as the Irish travelling community that they wouldn't give to other groups. That kind of thing shouldn't be tolerated and we should have equality for everyone where crimes receive the same attention/punishment regardless of the ethnicity of the perpetrators, but sadly, we're decades past when that actually happened.

Yes I am. English fans were banned for years so why are Maccabi fans different? I don't blame the police etc for banning fans.

To my knowledge, Maccabi fans have not caused something on the scale of Heysel.

If WMP were less selective about the fans they'd banned, you'd have a point. However part of the problem here is that around the same time they allowed fans of Young Boys in. Who have an appalling reputation, were never going to behave themselves and kicked off accordingly.

They are well known for their behaviour. I get the impression many here have no idea about them football wise but jumping on the bandwagon to protect them because they are Jewish. Any team who has supporters like that should have them banned from attending.

English fans weren’t banned because of fears THEY would be attacked by locals.

Local residents were the ones who threatened violence if the Maccabi fans came to Birmingham

In that case, what's your explanation for why Young Boys were allowed in?

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I'd have an issue if they'd banned Borussia Dortmund or Panathanikos Galatasaray or Lazio fans on bogus or false allegations, despite all these clubs having Ultras who have injured, fought or even killed other teams fans and a significant number of racist and fascist fans.

Celtic and Rangers fans are banned from each others grounds because there is accurate and confirmed evidence to support the claim there is a need for it.

It is nothing on the scale of 1970s / 1980s English fans. And is nothing unusual compared to the Turkish supporters, the Italian ultras, Ukraine teams fans.

Be honest here. If the subject of football hooliganism came up at the pub, would you have honestly said "oh never mind AC Milan, Millwall, West Ham, Fenerbache, Galatasaray, Napoli and Shakhtar Donetsk, its those Maccabi Tel Aviv lot you need to look out for!"

Or did everything you know about their hooliganism come to you once the story broke from Owen Jones et al?

What a great and simple post to hit the nail on the head.

All this “ooh, Maccabi fans are so bad they’re worse than the rest and totally unacceptable” is horseshit. Thuggery, racism. vandalism, drunkenness, you can find them all just as much or more in many teams’ fans, including British teams.

The police manufacturing and distorting evidence about Maccabi fans points to other causes of the ban. But there seem to be at least some posters who persist in this drivel about an Israeli team because it’s, er, Israeli.

He was supposed to report this extreme pressure to our actual community leaders - the government and its official channels. There are many ways to raise concerns about extremism, antisemitism, terrorism etc, all of which he should be very well versed in. If he believed he needed extra resources to stamp out the threat of organised Islamist gangs, he should have requested it - providing all of the evidence he instead saw fit to brush under the carpet when he was capitulating to the violent thugs and terrorists. If they were MPs or in positions of power, it was even more important they be reported and prevented from continuing to spread dangerous influence. But instead I don't believe any action at all has been taken against them, and they are free to continue inciting violence and encouraging others to do so too.

Do you think if an event that was likely to attract a lot of Muslims were being threatened by the Tommy Robinson lot that it would be understandable if the police just gave in to the 'extreme pressure' and banned Muslims? And then didn't even bother to escalate the threats they received from neo-Nazis declaring they were planning to arm themselves and attack, but just ignored them and when questioned said they didn't think they were relevant? And then claimed the reason they were banning Muslims was because they believed Muslims to be violent, and that allowing them to attend would endanger white people? Would you still have sympathy for the police...?

Ummm, I agree with you. The whole system is rotten to the core, but I wouldn't hold much faith in the government doing anything about it though. They'll dish out platitudes and plastic assurances to our Jewish community, but they're just words; empty and trite. My pp was reflecting on wmp dilemma, how on earth do you effectively police areas where ' community leaders ' hold more sway than the actual constabulary? If they had been open and stated that based on the evidence, we're actually more concerned about the local Muslim population perpetrating violence AGAINST the maccabi fans, how would that have gone down and to what effect on community relations? Realistically, It's a tinder box scenario.

Looks like others might be in the firing line.

www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-councillor-face-complaints-probe-33231581

It would be like saying "ok, Liverpool supporters made a lot of noise and there was a bit of argy-bargy against Chelsea so we need to ban them at the Spurs match"

"OK, no Liverpool fans at the Spurs match"

on being asked for their reasoning behind this

"well we googled a bit and while we couldn't find any actual evidence to ban them we decided to do it anyway and look what AI said might have happened in a different reality"

well i am not one of those, since i am a football fan who attends many (home and away) matches.

The English fans were banned from lots of things for sure. But the reason given was things they had actually done, not made up nonsense because a special interest group was applying pressure.

Do you understand what the actual problem is here?

IMO i have zero problem with the Young Boys fans (although when they played us they were fine) being banned if they cause mayhem, or these Maccabi fans, or any fans if they behave badly enough.

But what i don't want is to live in a society where the police make up evidence in order to justify what they are doing.

I wonder if there any non-Muslim people on Birmingham City Council?

There's a press conference at 4pm and its expected that they'll annouce Guildford will be retiring. Not really the strong response this needed but at least he won't be in a position of power any longer

but then there will be a new one. And who is going to be in charge of selection? is it going to be an open and transparent process?

Maybe this time instead of asking 50 people from the community, a couple of experienced police officers from branches which haven't recently had a major scandal could help out. There must be some.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/16/west-midlands-police-chief-craig-guildford-to-retire-after-maccabi-tel-aviv-fans-ban-row

He will go and the world will move on but I’m afraid the real issue hasn’t even been discussed - the unofficial power that Muslim ‘community leaders’ have in the UK’s second city.