Morning all, hope your weekend was quite fine. The top of the table is as tight as ever. United beat Fulham quite convincingly yesterday to go top but with some very interesting fixtures still to come that could easily change.
It was interesting watching Match of the Day the other night and the way they looked at certain incidents in the Hull game. For example, the Sol Campbell tackle in the second half which left Zayate injured. Collateral damage is what it was, unfortunate for the Hull player but it was a brilliant tackle from an experienced defender and quite how Phil Brown expected him to get a card there is beyond me. Well, I know why he was saying it. It’s because he’s a clueless orange twat. Sol’s tackle was hard but fair, the kind of tackle that we all love to see.
So MOTD featured replays of that and both the tedious Alans saw nothing wrong with it. ‘Perfect’, said Shearer. So, if it was perfect, what’s the point in going on about it? Maybe they could compare and contrast Sol’s tackle with a recent tackle which left a player with a broken leg? Nope. Fair enough. If they want to show it on its own merits then that’s understandable, but I don’t know how they can do that and ignore Boateng’s thuggery.
Speaking afterwards, Nicklas Bendtner, who previously had Boateng’s finger in his eye (and who knows where that finger has been?), said:
My eye’s OK now. I told him you can’t poke someone in the eye when the ref isn’t looking. That’s not fair. I told him that and he got a bit upset. He took it out on Bac and rightly got a red card. It was a poor challenge. You can see Bac’s knee and it’s got stud marks all along it. It could have been another serious injury but, luckily, nothing happened.
And I think we were lucky. There was no intent to play the ball, he didn’t so much go over it as out of its orbit, and he planted his studs quite deliberately on Sagna’s knee. Yes, he got a red card but only for his second yellow. The tackle was worthy of a red card on its own (and that’s leaving aside the earlier red Boateng should have had). So, if you’re going to spend a few minutes talking about a ‘perfect’ tackle, why can’t you spend even 30 seconds highlighting two things? One, a terrible tackle which could have resulted in another serious injury and two, a shockingly poor refereeing decision.
Andre Marriner allowed Hull to make challenge after challenge until the bar had been raised so high that Boateng figured he might get away with a crude, studs-up challenge on Sagna’s knee. Boateng is an experienced player, he knew he was on a yellow, but he’d seen the referee allow Fagan to grab an Arsenal player around the head and drag him to the ground without a yellow card. He’d seen Hull commit foul after foul without sanction. I suspect he thought he’d get a final warning and that’s Marriner’s fault. I’m all for the ref allowing the game to flow, I hate seeing players booked for no good reason but the official has to keep control of the game and he did not.
As for Match of the Day, I suppose it’s too much to ask that they dedicate any time to things like this until it happens to somebody they deem it important enough to focus on. I wonder who makes those decisions? Is is the presenters? The producer? Who decides what the talking points are? Whoever it is got it wrong on Saturday. Sol Campbell’s tackle was definitely worth talking about but only if you’re putting in context by showing challenges like Boateng’s which should be highlighted and driven out of the game. There was malice, clearly, there was intent, yet only a yellow card. Challenges like that need to be reviewed independently of the referee and the perpetrators given suspensions which go beyond the normal disciplinary procedures. As soon as that happens players will not go studs-up into other players knees, not unless they’re seriously mental, and the longer people like that spend out of the game the better.
Not much else going on really. Are you bothered that Samir Nasri is worried about his World Cup place? I can’t say I am to be honest. For me it’s quite simple, if he performs well for Arsenal then he’ll go to South Africa, I’m sure. Although with that loon Domenech you never know. The planets might be lined up wrong or something. Still, if Nasri can consistently produce the form he has shown in some recent games then he’d be a fool not to take him.
Alex Ferguson has started on the mind games, saying Arsenal are likely to be the most likely challengers to United for the title. It’s easy to see where he’s coming from. We don’t have to face either of United or Chelsea and on paper the run in is slightly easier than theirs but he never says anything in public without having some kind of ulterior motive for it. It’s an attempt to start putting pressure on us, we’ve just got to keep our heads down, ignore him and keep working hard.
And there we go. We can ease ourselves into things and with the full week to prepare for West Ham on Saturday it’ll be that kind of week, I reckon. Till tomorrow.
