Mark Hughes: breaking legs to win

On BBC Radio 5 Live this Saturday gone feelings were running fairly high following the horrendous injury sustained by Bobby Zamora and some rather interesting things were revealed over the duration. The program was introduced with Mark Chapman saying that Gary Cahill had done 'very little' to get sent off at the Emirates. Robbie Savage went on to say that kids should be taught how to cheat by pulling shirts and tripping players up, Savage also kept trying to justify cheating by saying it's simply part of the game:

"What's wrong with pulling shirts and little cynical fouls?"

Well it's cheating and against the rules for one Robbie. He then went on to speak about exactly what Mark Hughes had told his teams to do against superior opposition:

"Do you think Mark Hughes care if his team makes fouls and they win?"

"If Fabregas goes past you and you've got a chance to pull him down, have a sneaky tug of his shirt or tug him over, you're going to do it"

It is bad enough that a top manager is telling his players to deliberately go out and foul the opposition in a quite cynical manner. Some people would try to justify this by saying that everyone's at it, it's part of the game, etc. There is no justification for cheating and deliberate fouling, no manager should order it before games. It is also sad that people like Robbie Savage think this the only way to beat a better side, Roy Hodgson with Fulham and Martin O'Neill with Villa have proven that there are honest ethical ways of overcoming better sides. I am also quite sure that the likes of Arsene Wenger and Roy Hodgson would never do such a thing. The worst thing is that it doesn't stop there, it is not just little cynical fouls, it goes across another line, Mark Hughes tells his teams to be more aggressive 'in whichever way you can be':

"Mark Hughes used to say, when we used to play against teams that were technically better than us, he used to say 'stop them', 'be aggressive against them in whichever way you can be, be aggressive...When we played against teams like Arsenal we used to kick them off the park"

There's no doubt in my mind that these kind of instructions will inevitably lead to more serious injuries being sustained and more nasty shattered mangled limbs. We saw Karl Henry's tackle from behind resulting in a potentially career threatening injury for Bobby Zamora, it wasn't the worst of tackles, but this shows that it doesn't take awful tackles to end careers, just being that little bit more aggressive and dangerous will increase the chances of these kind of injuries being sustained. Paul Robinson did one on Cesc in the first half which was designed to injure, he went through the ball in such an aggressive manner that only Cesc jumping out the way prevented him from being injured. The above tackle on Robbie Savage is the kind of aggressive play that needs to be outlawed.

So we have it on record, Mark Hughes tells his teams to deliberately go out to foul better teams and to stop them using every aggressive means possible. I am sure that he is not the only manager out there who does this, I have no doubt that Sam Allardyce, Tony Pulis and Mick McCarthy do exactly the same type of thing. It is quite clear that referees in this country allow this kind of negative and overly aggressive play to prosper. Robbie Savage only received one red card in his whole career, that tells a story in itself.

No wonder we are seeing more horrendous injuries, as the modern game has sped up we are not seeing the rules of the game being properly enforced in a way that can protect the most skillful players. On the whole European referees do not tolerate what English referees do; overly aggressive tackling, raised studs and the highly cynical are much less tolerated on the continent. We need a culture shift in this country, otherwise the English game will continue to lag behind technically.

The FA need to introduce systems to ensure that dangerous tackling is outlawed; the strict consistent application of retrospective bans, video replay technology for officials and a citing system are good ideas that have been ignored thus far. We need better referees who can better discriminate between the overly aggressive and the safe, between the accidental and the cynical, and this will only come from having more officials who have played the game at a decent level who have better support from the top. The silence from certain areas from the media on this issue is deafening. Should deliberate cheating, fouling and leg breaking part of a 'man's game'?