Not by the refs, true enough, but they were by the general public. I used to wince every time Scholes went in for a tackle.
Well said HB What Scholes got away with was amazing. Oh no, but wait it wasn't amazing, because we were told 'Scholes can't tackle' so it was all right to laugh about it and let him carry on fouling. The fact he played for Man U, may or may not have had a bearing on this seeming anomaly.
He was just a dirty, cynical bastard who got away with murder due to his image with the media. He could tackle perfectly well, but he often chose not to.
People will ask why he didn't play in the '99 Champion's League final. It's because he was suspended, for cynically pole-axing opposition players on a regular basis.
Nobody's denying that Scholes was a good player, Lidls. They are denying that he was incapable of tackling or that he didn't know exactly what he was doing when he went in for yet another horrific challenge. The amount of times that I saw that ginger midget take someone out as they were starting a break, only to hear the commentator make some stupid platitude was unreal. "Oh, dear! Poor old Scholesy's done it again! What is he like? He'll never learn, will he, the loveable rogue!" Utter, total bollocks. Never got nearly enough stick for chucking in his international career, either.
Well said PNP. Scholes was a disgrace the way he went round fouling people, but because it was deemed to be ok by the misguided media and hoodwinked refs, he was allowed to carry on. I remember nearly getting chucked out of a pub for losing it when Scholes went on a one-man onslaught against us one game, he should have been off by half-time. He was allowed to stay on, and guess what he scored and Utd won. One of a long series of injustices against us at the hands of Utd.
Ditto goes for Dimitar Berbatov, Park ji-Sung, Nemanja Vidic...come to think of it, a lot of Man Utd players retire from their national teams once they turn 30, don't they?
Scholes, of course, wasn't the only dirty United player to earn his reputation principally off the back of his propensity for thuggish behaviour. Roy Keane and Jaap Stam are two other names that spring to mind. Teams like United can only make it to the top if they have (what they would term as) as enforcer, a bully-boy player whose only purpose on the field is to rough-up the opposition and stop them playing football. Take away their enforcer and you take away most of their so-called glory. It's the reason Spurs has been in the wilderness for so long. £ity are trying to breed their own enforcers, but the likes of Balotelli are far too stupid to go about it the right way. Roy Keane and Scholes can break another players legs with subtly, whereas Balotelli tried to crush their skulls. It's a little more obvious.
Cheers, guys! Yes, I had forgotten about those players. They definitely fit the mould, though. A United legend should write a biography entitled "How We Bullied Our Way To Glory After Glory." It would be an honest, if not fascinating, read.
It's no coincidence that Chelsea are falling short because their bullies are getting thin on the ground - Ballack (who was as cynical as Scholes with the "clumsy" challenges) has gone, Terry is usually six yards away from the opponents, and neither Drogba nor Lampard is guaranteed a start.
