From sense to the senseless: tackling

There isn't much exciting news out there at the moment, our second International break of the season thus far is boring most of us to tears. I know I do go on about it, but the issue of dangerous tackling is something that has been at the top of our agenda here for some time. A few rather interesting things have been said in the past few days:

"If you permit yourself to end the career of your colleague in the other shirt, why should I say that you should come back after 14 days?........I think you should sanction these things very severely, that means a long, long expulsion from the game."

Belgian Michel D'Hooghe, who is also chairman of FIFA's medical committee, said the above and some other rather interesting things. I could not agree more, there have been too many shocking tackles in the past few years and the punishments for reckless tackling have been way too lenient. The FA seem more concerned with small harmless globs of sputum, while breaking legs is never worth more than a three match ban, utterly ridiculous. The violent and stupid Ryan Shawcross has been putting his bloody foot in it again:

"It's part and parcel of football. They are tough-tackling central midfielders whose games are based on making tackles, winning the ball and then giving it to the ball-players. Sometimes injuries are caused....You have just got to accept in these times, with the ball moving so fast and the player moving so fast, you are going to mis-time tackles. That is when injuries can happen."

Shawcross is a moron. I have no problem with safe tackling, sometimes injuries will happen that are completely unavoidable and just unfortunate. Something that Shawcross fails to acknowledge is the fact that flying into tackles in an out of control and overly forceful manner is inevitably going to result in unnecessary broken bones, irrelevant of whether the ball is won or not, and this is simply not acceptable. We don't have to accept nasty career ending injuries because the likes of Shawcross are too selfish and vicious to bother exerting any kind of control over their limbs when tackling. Danny Murphy has bravely spoken out against thugs like Shawcross and clubs like Stoke:

"If you`re going in at a certain pace and don`t get it right you are going to hurt someone. Players need to be more intelligent, especially the ones who are doing it repeatedly. They are culpable in that. You get managers sending teams out to stop other sides from playing, which is happening more and more....Stoke, Blackburn and Wolves — you can say they`re doing what they can to win the game — but the fact is that the managers are sending the players out so pumped up that inevitably there are going to be problems."

It is worth reading what Danny Murphy has said properly, it is absolutely spot on. Some players do need to more intelligent, the violence that is routinely employed by certain players and clubs equates to an intent to harm in my book. Ironically in the past Murphy's own manager, Mark Hughes, has directly ordered his team to go out to aggressively kick better sides off the park.

The continued silence from the FA on this issue is stunningly deafening. The likes of Shawcross, Taylor and Henry should be facing months on the sidelines, not just a couple of weeks when they end another player's career. The Belgian FA banned Axel Witsel for nearly three months for a tackle that brutally broke an opposition player's leg, Tomas Ujfalusi was recently banned for two games for a relatively tame tackle that injured Lionel Messi; note that both these incidents were seen and punished at the time by the referee.

The FA claim that they can do nothing retrospectively when the referee has already seen the incident. This is a complete and utter lie. The FA can easily make the subjective judgement about any incident that the referee has made a 'serious or obvious' error, and then hand down a harsh ban for a bad tackle retrospectively, there is also the Ben Thatcher precedent. There is no rule or law to stop them doing this, the only thing stopping them is their own complete lack of guts which prevents them from confronting this cancer in our game.

Well done Newcastle United FC

I am pleased that Newcastle United have written to the FA urging them to act regarding Nigel De Jong's dangerous lag breaking tackle on Ben Arfa. An official statement on the club's website reveals the following:

"The club has asked the FA for the appropriate action to be taken against De Jong for the tackle which in the club's opinion was unnecessary and used excessive force."

The tackle was brutal and unnecessary, De Jong went completely through the man in an excessively forceful manner, it was blatantly serious foul play. Anyone who thinks that this kind of tackling should be part of football is a fool. The ball is now very firmly in the FA's court. Samir Nasri has also spoken out about the De Jong tackle and the lack of protection from the overtly violent in the English game. What he says is both fair and reasonable. Guillem Balague's piece on the topic is spot on, his comments on pressing and sensible tackling are particularly pertinent. Flying into tackles in an out of control rarely wins the ball, it is often a sign of failure, pressing does not have to go hand in hand with dangerous tackling. Graham Poll reiterates some excellent points on bad tackling here.

This season we have now seen several shocking tackles go completely unpunished because referees have made serious errors, the FA has done absolutely nothing thus far to try to stamp this violence out of the game. There was Robinson on Diaby right in front of the referee and now De Jong on Ben Arfa. There have also been some appalling tackles which have been under punished such as Karl Henry's shocker against Wigan.

The FA must act. Excessively forceful dangerous tackling must be confronted otherwise it will continue to lead to the skillful being quite literally stamped out of the game. The worst violent lunges need to result in six to twelve game bans whether the opposition player is injured or not. Other countries are acting on this, it is now time for the FA, but for some reason I suspect they will do precisely nothing again.

Dutch show FA what balls are

The Dutch coach Dick Van Mirwijk has sensationally dropped Nigel De Jong from their latest squad as a result of his shocking tackle which broke Ben Arfa's leg on Sunday. The strong and forthright Ducthman called the tackle "wild and unnecessary" and added:

"It is unfortunate, especially since he does not need to do it. The funny thing is that the referee did not even show a yellow card for it. I have a problem with the way Nigel needlessly looks to push the limit. I am going to speak to him."

MOTD seemed to ignore the incident completely last night, just as the completely incompetent Martin Atkinson had done earlier even when it had broken a leg right in front of his very eyes. We should remember poor Ben Arfa in all this, this is a potentially career ending injury, get well soon Hatem.

If Dick knew English football better he would not find it funny that no card was shown, the lack of understanding of overly aggressive and dangerous tackling in this country means that these kind of leg breakers are routinely missed by incompetent referees. The FA also have their head so deep in the sand that they refuse to act retrospectively even though they have the power to do so.

The Spanish authorities have recently given a player a two match ban for a tackle on Lionel Messi, a tackle that was seen and punished by the referee at the time. In fact retrospective bans for violent incidents that were seen by referees are happening rather routinely on the continent, is is just a terrible shame that the FA do not even recognise there is a problem and continue to refuse to act.

The same old tired defences of the player who committed the appalling tackle come out, he's 'not that type of player', it wasn't 'malicious', 'it's a man's game'. None of these cut the mustard, reckless violent tackling with an excessive amount of force has no place in our game, it is indefensible, these kind of tackles are malicious by their very definition. Tackling is perfectly possible in a very safe manner without endangering the safety of one's opponent, people who cannot understand this are nothing but fools. Tackling like this was never part of football, it seems to me that the art of proper tackling is being lost, and defending the indefensible is no way to bring proper tackling back.

Not enough for a variety of reasons

At least the Ryder Cup went well this afternoon, because the football certainly didn't. Blackpool went away to Liverpool and showed that it is not just about the individuals, it is about the team and the work ethic. It wasn't awful by any means against Chelsea, we had our chances, there were some positives. The problem was that we didn't really have the cutting edge we needed to convert the possession into goals, and we also never looked as robust as they did in defense.

Chelsea were stronger and more athletic than us, this is not something one would have said five years ago. Our injuries have played a part, depriving us of the pace of Walcott, the craft of Cesc, the incisive RVP and the powerful Bendtner. However we don't quite have the athleticism and the pace in the side that we did in those great Wenger sides of old. For this reason we found it hard to break down the Chelsea machine, despite having a lot of the ball for long periods.

Defensively we looked rather vulnerable at times, again Gael Clichy was caught out of position time and time again. It was not entirely the defense's fault though. I think the 4-3-3 system is part of the problem. The full backs are often left terribly exposed due the lack of cover from in front, while the fact that our full backs are so attacking compounds this problem. The three central midfielders often roam all over the shop and there is too often very little structure to our team's shape, especially when a certain Russian does very little tracking back indeed. Not a single clean sheet away from home in 11, this tells the story of our failings, we simply cannot keep a clean sheet.

Credit again to Chelsea, they were largely solid at the back, they were tough and athletic in midfield, while Drogba gave them that cutting razor edge up front. Fair play to them, they have invested a lot of their money very wisely. They have a better balance in their side, they can grind out results, they can keep clean sheets, they have only conceded two goals all season. Really we should look at Chelsea and see that they have some things that we lack, we should learn from their power and athleticism, they also had no passengers in their side today.

It was not all bad, I apologise for being negative. Fabianski built on his impressive midweek performance, Wilshere handled the game well, it was fantastic to see JET get a few minutes at the end. There is also no doubt that the missing players significantly blunted out attacking options, we also had some good early chances to take the lead. The problem was that at one nil down we didn't really look like equalising, we didn't bang hard enough at their door.

In conclusion the sad thing is that this Chelsea side has a lot of the attributes which remind me of our great double winning sides under Wenger, they have some terrific powerful athletes and defend very solidly as a unit, they can be lethal on the counter attack. We need to learn from Chelsea's positive attributes and not hide in denial pretending that we were as good.

Another leg breaker, another skilful player broken

Another player has a broken leg, another violent reckless challenge has gone unpunished by the referee. Meanwhile the FA stand by watching and absolutely sod all about it. We have already lost several Premiership players to broken bones this season as a direct result of overly aggressive and dangerous tackling, not to mention the number who have been put out for a few weeks with nasty sprains and bruising.

De Jong is the culprit this time and it isn't the first time for him. He won the ball with one leg, however this is irrelevant as the fact is that the tackle was reckless for two key reasons. Firstly if one has to scissor the player with the non tackling leg with the follow through then it is a foul, irrelevant of whether the first leg won the ball. Secondly the amount of force that De Jong used was excessive and endangered his opponent's safety. For these reasons the tackle was serious foul play and should have resulted in a red card.

The problem is that a lot of muppets in the media and around the game do not understand the basics of tackling. The BBC joked about Ben Arfa's misfortune, while Chris Waddle on ESPN seemed to think that there was nothing wrong De Jong's reckless and violent challenge. We have a major problem in this country and it badly needs addressing, players legs will continue to shatter in a quite needless manner until the FA decide to get off their lazy spoilt behinds and do something proactive about this violent cancer in the game.

Karl Henry tackle and repugnant fat Sam

Here is the video showing Karl Henry's latest leg breaking challenge. Well done to Lee Mason for getting the red card out straight away, it's just a shame that the FA don't want to highlight this kind of violence by giving extended bans of at least six games, that's what this kind of recklessness deserves.

The most worrying thing is that Karl Henry seems to be aggrieved that he has been sent off, he seems to think he has been harshly treated and it should only be a yellow card. The amount of force that he has put into the tackle is truly frightening, it is just incredibly lucky that Gomes has come out of it without a shattered bone.

There were a few other poor tackles yesterday, N'Zonzi's straight legged lunge against Stoke stood out and deserved a red card for it's recklessness. Fat Sam's comments on bad tackling yesterday also showed just how regressive some people's attitude is. He talked of football being a game of eleven versus eleven and said that yellow/red cards were 'game spoilers'.

Fat Sam may think that leg breaking tackles are just mistimed accidents but that is just plain nonsense coming from a man whose team go out to make up for their lack of skill by being overly dangerous and aggressive. The 'game spoilers' are the likes of Allardyce and Pulis who instruct their teams to go out and win at all costs. The tackles that are so overly forceful and violent that they routinely break bones are the 'game spoilers'. Teams that play like fat Sam's need to be punished properly to wipe them out of the English game, the FA need to step in the punish reckless tackling properly. The fact that Karl Henry only gets a three game ban for his tackle is beyond a joke, we need to be kicking kicking out of football.

Injuries, injuries and more injuries

As always we are struggling with injuries, our list is currently as follows: Ramsey, Almunia, Vermaelen, Gibbs, Cesc, Bendtner, RVP, Walcott. Some people seem to think that these injuries are the fault of the club's medical team, I would say that this idea is misguided at best and arguably stupid.

There are several reasons for our fondness of excessive injuries. Firstly we have a few injury prone players like Tomas Rosicky, Abou Diaby, RVP, Walcott and Johan Djourou. These players have had bad luck with recurrent injuries and this unfortunately becomes a tendency. The more injuries one has, the more likely one is to get another injury, this vicious cycle can be a cruel master. Secondly the kind of football we play and the type of smaller faster technical players that we have are both factors that predispose us more to injuries than other clubs.

We have seen Diaby, Eduardo and Ramsey left with nasty shattered limbs after horror tackles in recent years, this can then leave us with a player who is then predisposed to having annoying recurrent niggling injuries. The vicious cycle means that the more injuries one has, the more the other players have to play and the less one can rotate, meaning that the more one's fit players are then predisposed to getting injured, the vicious cycle continues ad infinitum. The fact that all our players are top international players and get very few breaks from the game also plays a big role, players are much more likely to get injured if they never have decent breaks throughout the year.

Overall I think some of our bad luck with injuries has been just that, bad luck, but some of it has been due to our lack of squad balance, our lack of the bigger more robust physical players means that we are more predisposed to injuries than your average Premiership squad of players.

Anyways we still have a big squad and have enough players to put out a very decent side on Sunday at the Bridge. Fabianski will start in goal, injuries mean that the back four virtually selects itself. It is hard to see past a midfield three of Denilson-Song-Wilshere, while the front three is likely to be Arshavin-Chamakh-Nasri. The key for me will be whether we can cope with Drogba's attacking power, while Nasri and Arshavin will need to support Chamkh and make sure our lone striker is not left isolated. I agree with Arsene and who wouldn't, Chelsea is a massive marker on how far we have come and I hope it's a positive one.