Monday 8 September 2008

Perspective from poverty of performance


Although the mighty Arsenal have not been in action, observing England's persistent failure to ever amount to anything remotely near the sum of its parts is a good reminder for me of just how easy it is to produce mediocre football, and how fortunate we are to have the quality of football that Arsene routinely serves up for us. Having said that Theo did pretty well on his full debut, his selection looked a good move from Capello, it's just a shame about a few other slightly less good moves.

The 'holic has been rightly pointing out the nonsensical nature of some recent transfer rumours, why would Arsene be so keen to bring in the likes of M'Bia when he already has a better player, Song, ready to break through. I can't see it myself, as for the Appiah rumours, even if he was fully fit I don't think he'd be of sufficient quality to really add to what we already have.

Arseblogger noticed William Gallas' amusing comments on the Nasri Barton molehill, my amusement is rapidly lost when I remember some of the completely ludicrous and overly severe punishments that the spineless FA have handed out in the past. For example anyone remember the 'Battle of Old Trafford'?

Numerous bans were meted out and a huge 275,000 pound fine to the club for just a bit of handbags, no punches were even thrown. It was essentially a massive over reaction brought about by the media's hyping up of the incident. Emmanuel Adebayor was banned for 4 games and fined 7,500 pounds for doing absolutely nothing in 2007.

Now we have Joey Barton seriously assaulting a team mate, he actually knocked him out with a punch to the head and then continued to beat the crap out of him while he lay unconscious on the floor, that's the kind of lovely chap Joey Barton is. His model behaviour can be seen on film here, his record of shame does not end there unfortunately.

The FA are proving themselves to be cowardly hypocrites of the highest order, William Gallas is spot on, there is absolutely no consistency in their judgements. On the one hand they will ban people for several games for no justifiable reason, on the other hand they fail to throw the book at people who treat their team mates as expendable punch bags. What a fine example they are setting, I wonder how long til Barton's next red card.

3 comments:

Jussi Keinonen said...

I know Barton should be jailed and has been and will be etc.

But the punishments mentioned in the blog were for public behaviour, in games organised by the league, and as such were harsher.

There have been lots of fights in training grounds (although not as bad) in all sports, but few are reported.

1979gooner said...

good point jussi,

I still reckon a certain behaviour should be punished consistently, irrelevant of whether it was on tv or on the training ground,

disciplinary systems should fit the punishment to the act, not the media coverage of the act

Obsinho said...

Did Barton get any criminal investigations for the Dabo attack? I seem to remeber he did, but cannot be bothered investigating.

Also, did he have to answer any charges of bringing the game into disrepute from the FA?

Or of having the same haircut for 20 years?