Murphy backlash begins: LMA trot out the same old

The media has aired the biased views of the LMA who have responded to Danny Murphy's recent comments. It's barely worth repearing what they have to say, they have said nothing of note, it's just a few words designed to discredit Murphy's spot on remarks. The same old defense of the reckless career ending tackles is trotted out by the LMA:

'mistimed tackles by fractions of a second will happen and with that will be a potential risk of impact or injury but in no way does it follow that the actions are either deliberate or encouraged'

Utter utter rubbish from the LMA. The fact is that certain managers tell their players to go into games aggressively and to try to kick the other team off the park, it is an inevitable result of overly physical and aggressive tackling that players will have their careers ended prematurely by shocking injuries. Allardyce is on record saying that 'winning the ball at all costs' is acceptable, while Mark Hughes has been quoted to order his team to go out to aggressively kick the other off the park. The LMA is a disgrace, you simply cannot defend this kind of management.

The LMA and certain morons in the media should go back to the drawing board and actually bother to read the rules of the game. Tackling with excessive force and in a dangerous manner that endangers the safety of one's opponent is defined as 'serious foul play', it is not some innocent inevitability of trying to win the ball. This particularly lame piece of writing sums up the lack of cogency in these arguments, injuries are all just an inevitable part of playing a contact sport, what utter rot.

The media have a responsibility to get behind Danny Murphy, he has taken a massive risk in speaking out against something that is in danger of wrecking our game, instead our media are doing the opposite, they are allowing Murphy to be slated by people whose arguments have logic that could be picked apart by a three year old. As Rockylives says over at ArsenalArsenal, the media need to stand up and be counted on this issue.

All Danny Murphy said was that dangerous tackles need to be punished properly and that some teams are routinely going into tackles with excessive force, extremely sensible stuff. Murphy should not be scapegoated as he is going to be by the Neanderthal chavs who think that snapping bones is simply part and parcel of the game. The media should be ashamed of the way in which they have presented these issues to the public, the problem is that our culture means that the media are only writing what the majority of idiots will want to read, it is just sad that our footballing culture is so accepting of such reckless and malicious violence.