Left back - a football blog

Speaking after scoring a goal in last night’s game against the mighty USA, John Terry said:

I’ve shown that I’m a big man. I take full responsibility for what happened in Moscow but I’m a man for the big games and I’ve shown that.

Firstly, anyone who says ‘I am a big man’ is opening himself up for the kind of ridicule and scorn normally reserved for men who thump their chests and say ‘Come on then! Come on then!’ in a pub fight and then get knocked out with one punch.

And let’s be clear, scoring in a meaningless friendly against relatively poor opposition like the USA does not make you a ‘big man’, nor is it a big game. Had he saved this kind of empty rhetoric for next season when he scored the winner against United or Arsenal or Liverpool in a crucial league game then you might say he has a point, but to do it after last night’s goal was just plain daft.

This was the best bit though:

That goal was for the fans and in particular the Chelsea fans who have been great to me and really helped me through it. That was for them.

Wow, I’m sure they’re grateful for an England goal.

‘Forget the Champions League, at least JT scored against England and he dedicated it to us! I feel so much better now!!’

Give this man his own TV show.

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I know as part of the Sportingo network we shouldn’t expect much from Caught Offside but making paedophile jokes as part of their headlines really is too much.

I’ve now deleted the link from this site to Caught Offside.

Fucking pathetic, guys. Really, truly pathetic.

Related: How to write like Sportingo.

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Sorry for the lack of action around here. We’re having end of season, not in any trophies ennui.

Sparked back into life by this quote from Rafa Benitez though. After last night’s 1-1 draw with Chelsea in the Champions League he said:

Of course I am disappointed with the officials’ performance. It is not the first time this has happened to us and we are really disappointed.

Pardon me? Is he actually for real? I mean, like, seriously!!

Two generous sendings off against Inter Milan, two very favourable penalty decisions about Arsenal, and he’s complaining about a ref who appeared decent enough to me last night (one Cole foul on Kuyt in the second half aside)??

Madness, I tell you. The man is obviously deranged. Liverpool have had great chunks of good luck and generous refereeing decisions in the CL this season. The good luck ran out in the last minute of injury time though.

What in the name of all that is holy was Riise thinking? He has feet, doesn’t he? It’s not like he’s a Vietnam vet with no lower legs and only one of those skateboard things to push himself around on. Why didn’t he kick it? And that’s not the first time he’s done that this season - didn’t he score almost the same own goal against Luton in the FA Cup?

You’ve got to question the keeper a bit there as well. He should have come for that ball. Anyway, it’s nicely poised for the 2nd leg - I still hope Liverpool do it. A United v Chelsea final would be sickening.

My order of preference for CL glory:

Barcelona - Liverpool - United or Chelsea (if either of them wins it I’m going to make a football out of my own poo and throw it up for Ronaldo or John Terry to head back to me).

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Just why are FIFA so resistant to the idea of introducing technology to football? They’ve scrapped trials of goal-line technology, and instead are to train extra assistants to stand behind each goal.

If FIFA were in charge of cars, they’d still have people walking in front of them waving flags.

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Has Sepp Blatter ever come up with a good idea? Maybe I don’t know enough about the inner workings of FIFA, but I get the impression that Blatter is a bit of an idiot.

His latest idea may not be as ridiculous as his plan to force women footballers to play in skimpy clothing, but it’s pretty stupid nonetheless: lifetime bans and criminal prosecutions for dangerous tackles.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not condoning dangerous play, and I think the current system of straight red cards earning the aggressor a three-match ban, regardless of the offence, is absurd. But lifetime bans are a nonsense. For a start, they depend on the interpretation; the recent tackle by Martin Taylor on Eduardo, for instance, was reckless and stupid, but was there an element of malice? If Eduardo’s foot hadn’t been planted the way it was, he wouldn’t have suffered the terrible injury; would that still be an offence worth ending Taylor’s career? A six match ban would be sufficient, as far as I’m concerned; we have to give players the chance to apologise and rehabilitate themselves.

And as for criminal charges, once you start down that road you’re opening yourselves up for a whole new era of litigation. If you set the precedent that tackles can lead to legal action, what’s to stop players suing other players if they feel they have been tackled unfairly? Or players suing managers for giving them instructions to be physical, which then lead to a player being banned for life?

Football needs to be a physical game, but it doesn’t have to be a dangerous one. No-one wants to see players facing potentially career-ending injuries, but the solution, in my opinion, is a mixture of the following ideas:

• Referees to apply the letter of the law from the first whistle, not to let the first couple go free;
• Longer bans for reckless or dangerous tackles;
• Five minutes off the field after being given a caution for dangerous play, in order to let tempers cool;
• Video panels to apply or extend punishments that the referee didn’t see or didn’t act upon sufficiently

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Quote from the United manager yesterday:

One minute we were top and then Arsenal score their 95th-minute goal from their normal seven minutes of injury time.

Honestly, he must be taking the piss, right? Manchester United, kings of the lengthy injury time, inspired by their manager chewing his gum and angrily tapping his watch at any official in the vicinity, are complaining that another team gets too much injury time?

Laughable.

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It was referenced below but the sending off of Boro’s Jeremie Aliadiere could not have been more different than that of Martin Taylor for his shocking tackle on Arsenal’s Eduardo.

Yes, we all know you can’t ‘raise your hands’, as if the simple act of raising your hands would instantly result in a shattered jaw for the opponent, but three games for what he did was very harsh.

Boro appealed, the appeal was rejected and now Aliadiere has to serve an extra game for making a ‘frivolous appeal’.

So, let’s get this in context: Jeremie Aliadiere will miss 4 games because he ‘raised his hands’, not because of a punch, an elbow or anything that might really hurt a player. Martin Taylor gets 3 games after his brutal challenge put another player out of the game for 9 months.

If I were Boro I’d appeal again and I’d want to know exactly how anybody with a brain in their head can justify Aliadiere spending more time on the sidelines than Martin Taylor. Can anybody, no matter what team they support or what their opinion of Taylor’s challenge, possibly justify that? No, they cannot.

Just more evidence that the disciplinary system is absolutely fucked up. It’s making an absolute mockery of football and unless more is done to punish real violent conduct then there will be more Eduardos.

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Obviously the Eduardo incident is the one that most of the headlines have been generated about. Some thoughts in bullet point form.

• I don’t think Taylor tried to break his leg, I do think Taylor tried ‘let him know he was there’. Both Taylor and Eduardo were unlucky.
• Any player, manager or pundit who tries to say it wasn’t a red card is absolutely clueless.
• The FA, so quick to dole out punishments for players who commit such outrageous acts as wearing Superman underpants or wearing a t-shirt with a message on it for when they score, must immediately introduce a system where acts of violent conduct can be punished more severely than a 3 game ban
• Jeremie Aliadiere and Martin Taylor each miss the same number of games, punished as severely as each other yet the incidents are so far removed from each other in terms of seriousness it’s laughable
• Arsene Wenger’s initial comments about Taylor being given a life ban were over the top and the Arsenal manager acknowledged that by retracting his statement. Yet pundits like David Platt, having viewed pictorial and video evidence, were unwilling to change their position. They complain about Wenger but at least he had the balls to come out and say he was wrong.
• Websites that continued to report Wenger’s ‘life ban’ comments a full 24 hours after he had retracted them are pathetic
• The lack of media condemnation for the dangerous tackle is worrying. You wonder if it had been a foreign player who shattered Wayne Rooney’s leg would the reaction have been the same

Hopefully Eduardo will make a full recovery and play again for Arsenal because he was beginning to show signs of being a real talent. Our best wishes to him.

Elsewhere in the Premier League. Cheerio Fulham, Newcastle are now flirting with relegation and so pathetic is their squad and their lack of fight they deserve to be right in the mire, Torres is the one bright spot in Liverpool’s season. Imagine how much they’d be struggling without him.

Paul Jewell will leave Derby at the end of the season, I reckon. I’ve never heard a manager so consitently negative about his team.

Carling Cup Final - dull as dishwater. Chelsea got what they deserved, which was nothing. With so many top class players they’re so very negative. I thought Grant was going to change all that. They wouldn’t have lost that final under Mourinho.

Anyway, your thoughts welcome as always.

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After watching Emmanuel Eboue take a theatrical flop in the penalty box against Milan last night, Richard Keys tried to stoke up his usual post-match controversy by insisting it could have been a penalty. His reasoning for this - which he gave repeatedly - was that “there was contact”.

So what? There’s quite often contact between players in the penalty area. If every bit of contact was awarded a penalty, we’d see rugby scores.

There are ten reasons a player might be penalised, but none of them involve simply making contact. Stop stirring, Keys, you tiresome sod.

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Nani’s ball juggling in the FA Cup game on Saturday was irritating for Arsenal fans, but then young players do things like that from time to time. They learn. And if they don’t they’ll soon get taught by the opposition.

Witness Kerlon, famed for his so-called ’seal’ dribble where he runs with the ball bouncing on his head, get put in his place by a defender distinctly unimpressed by the antics. I think this lad was linked with Manchester United as well. Can you imagine him trying it in England? He’d have his head taken off, and quite rightly.

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