Firstly, many thanks to everyone who has been in touch about the blogging over the last couple of days. Obviously it’d be far better not to have to write entries like that but your feedback is always very welcome and much appreciated. Thank you.
To those who have had a pop, accusing me of being biased, the clue is in the name of the blog, you fucking morons.
If there’s one thing this incident has confirmed it is that the vast majority of people involved in English football, as players, managers, pundits or whatever, have their priorities entirely wrong. You could barely move yesterday for all the people coming out in defence of ‘poor Ryan Shawcross’. He died for our sins so that the sins of all might be forgiven, you know. Body of Ryan, amen.
Wayne Rooney said he was sure Ryan would be “all right” after his dreadful trauma. Alex Ferguson, English football’s most high profile manager, rang Shawcross to offer him his support. Paul Parker said Arsene Wenger should apologise to Shawcross, the man who hasn’t yet apologised publicly for breaking Ramsey’s leg. Alan Curbishley blamed Ramsey, saying he should have pulled out of the tackle. There are even people of such unfathomable ignorance out there that they suggest Ramsey broke his own leg before Shawcross even had the chance do it. And the usual suspects were out in force broadcasting their cretinous opinions to the world.
And how much did we hear about Aaron Ramsey? How much did we hear about the young man whose career has been put on hold due to a horrific injury? How much did we hear about the obvious problem with the FA’s disciplinary procedures? How much did we hear about what football can do to stop this kind of injury happening again? How much did we hear about players having to take responsibility for their actions? Not much at all, if anything. A couple of articles and the chaps on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast had a sensible discussion about it without the jingoistic bollocks on display almost everywhere else.
Instead Arsenal are accused of paranoia, Arsene Wenger is castigated for having the temerity to be upset that yet another of his players has been brutalised out of the game for a long period of time, and the real victim in all this is poor Ryan Shawcross who is going to struggle to get his head together in time to play for England. The poor chap. Give me a break. And, all the while, the evidence against Shawcross mounts. This video from his time on loan at Royal Antwerp (one of United’s feeder clubs, I believe) shows what kind of a player he is (via @champpdog). This young man’s career so far makes an outright liar of every single person who claims he’s not that kind of player.
He might be a nice chap, who loves kittens and fluffy bunny rabbits and is nice to his mum and whatever else, but on the pitch he has a serious problem. He injures people. And as time goes by those injuries are getting worse. Making excuses for him means somebody else is going to be a victim in the future because nobody is telling him the way he plays is wrong. I’ve watched the Ramsey thing over and over again and he goes in too hard. He is not trying to just win the ball, he is trying to hit the ball as hard as he possibly can. He is swinging through like a golf shot, it’s utterly reckless and that’s what broke Ramsey’s leg. Yes, you want players to be committed but they also have a responsibility to tackle in a way which does not put another player at risk. That’s why two-footed challenges are no longer acceptable, because the risk of injury is too great.
Unless you’re 100% sure you can get the ball you cannot go in with the kind of force that Shawcross did. You want proof? Aaron Ramsey’s leg is your proof. Maybe 9 times out of 10 nothing happens but the 1 time out of 10 is what you want to avoid. I struggle to see how anybody can defend it as ‘just one of those things’.
Let me challenge any of these people now, the Collymores, the Talksports, the halfwit pundits like Parker and the columnists who back the Stoke man – would your reaction be the same if a foreign player had put Wayne Rooney out of the game for a year? If an Arsenal player hacked Steven Gerrard’s leg in two just months before the World Cup? No chance. Whoever that player was would be relentlessly criticised and hounded. Look at how Cristiano Ronaldo was treated over a wink, a bit of gamesmanship. Remember when Beckham broke his metatarsal before the 2002 World Cup in a challenge with Deportivo’s Aldo Duscher? Here’s what Duscher had to say:
Maybe the worst thing is that seven or eight English journalists appeared at my house. I was chased by them and they gave me the impression I had done something terrible. It’s very hard when all of the press of one country is attacking you.
And he was public enemy number 1. The English press went to town on him. Teams of journalists sent to La Coruña to follow a man whose tackle was reckless but compared to Ramsey’s the injury to Beckham was relatively minor. A tiny little bone in his foot broken. But then Duscher was a filthy Argie and Beckham at that time England’s golden boy. They chased him. Think about that for a minute.
Yet Aaron Ramsey is just a young Welshman playing for a ‘French’ team. Shawcross is supported because he is English. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Former Arsenal legend Bob Wilson:
The game has moved forward but the Football Association and the Premier League are content to have a brutal side to the game. In my opinion this is born out of most managers and coaches facing Arsenal, plus media pundits and even ex-players, instructing their players to get in their faces. Opposing players are told to shake them up, get in their faces, tackle hard, bully them. I would defy coaches and managers to deny that is the case.
We keep hearing about how there was no ‘intent’ or ‘malice’ in the challenge, which misses the point entirely. You don’t have to have intent or malice to hurt somebody but let me ask this. If Ramsey had been left on the ground with a bruised shin and a sore leg what would Shawcross have done? Walked away, happy that he’d got ‘stuck in’ and shown he was the big man.
Goodplaya made a very good point yesterday, one which I noted during the game but forgot about in the light of Ramsey’s injury. In the first half Cesc slid in on Shawcross, admittedly a little from behind, but he got the ball and hardly any of the man. Shawcross went beserk, moaning at the referee about the tackle. This is a big, hard centre-half who doesn’t like to be tackled yet is more than happy to dish it out. More than happy to put his laces through the ball … oh, ball’s gone … and now it’s somebody’s shin. He’s a coward and a bully and unfortunately for Aaron Ramsey he bore the brunt of both those despicable characteristics.
Anyway, so as not to finish on a negative note, the injury to Ramsey will provide an unfortunate motivation for this Arsenal team. Arsene Wenger says:
This group is so strong mentally and have a unity so this will give us one more reason to fight until the end and do it for him.
While Thomas Vermaelen says:
We have to win every game now and we will do that and will do it as well for Aaron.
In pure footballing terms we should have enough to cope with Ramsey’s injury. Obviously it’s a huge shame because his development this season was very obvious and he was also capable of chipping in with goals. That said, if we can keep Diaby fit between now and the end of the season, and we also have Tomas Rosicky who can do the same kind of job, then hopefully his absence on the pitch is something we can cope with.
The fight to the end begins on Saturday against Burnley. Hopefully that game will start to dominate the headlines as the week progresses.
Till tomorrow.
