FA covering themselves in manure

The FA's inconsistent and useless disciplinary system continues to work its wonders, as Martin Taylor is banned for three games for a dangerous straight legged lunge while Jeremie Alaidiere is banned for four games for a little slap.

As Arseblogger says, the FA are weak cowards who have been refusing to address the problem of violent tackles for a long long time. The sheer inconsistency of punishments astounds, as petulant little non events like Aliadiere's are jumped on, while genuine career ending tackles are just lumped in together with everything else.

There should be some way of punishing the more violent offenders more severely to try to stamp this nasty streak out of the game. It also should not matter if the referee has or has not seen the incident, if it is violent and dangerous then it should be punished whether seen or not. The FA have preferred to ignore flaws in the system, as dealing with them would be far too much like hard work.

The way people are expressing their sympathy for Martin Taylor beggars belief, Alex McLeish has come out of this affair looking like an utter ignoramus, even commenting that Taylor would have to make challenges like his tackle on Eduardo again. Taylor does not deserve to be demonised, however he should be thinking long and hard about his woeful tackle, and if he is feeling shattered then he should think how he would like to have a shattered ankle covered in a plaster cast.

Anyway while Eduardo recovers, Arsenal will be taking on Aston Villa at the Emirates. One of the few positives to come from Saturday's game was Theo Walcott's performance, hopefully he can use this as a platform to move on from. We badly need three points from the Villa game, and it will be interesting to see how Arsene shuffles the pack.