Definitely a point gained rather than two dropped. Spurs were without key attacking players and so needed to play far more defensively to work to their strengths. As a defensive unit, they hardly put a foot wrong. Walker played brilliantly against Bellamy and rarely allowed Bellamy to get the better of him. King and Dawson, the latter in particular, were exceptional in handling Carroll. BAE was the worst of a pretty good back line. Livermore and Parker were immense. I can only recall one stray Livermore pass and he is developing into a fierce, competitive DM. I think Kranjcar deserves a lot of plaudits too because he's been having such a hard time getting into the squad, but today he played very well defensively and his distribution was excellent. He must have made half a dozen key tackles and spread the ball better than Modric did. The front 3 (Bale, Modric and Ade) had off days. Bale was awful and his poor performance was summed up with his ridiculous dive and strange follow up reaction. Ade was anonymous and Modric only showed flashes of his usual immense self. I think Parker was MoM, closely followed by Livermore, although most of our defensive 8 had a stake in getting it. I can understand the point LDL is trying to make. I don't think Parker is dirty, but he is aware of what he can get away with in terms of little niggles and kicks or minor fouls. It is a quality that, whilst can be a little unfair, is essential to every good DM who is there to break up play and protect the back four. It is something Spurs need and the previous 3 occupants of that role (Davids, Zokora and Palacios) all had limited success in.
Bale was diving out of the way of a very poor Martin Kelly(?) challenge to me, that's why he reacted straight away when he got up, before anyone had suggested it was a dive. I haven't seen it again this morning but that's certainly how I saw it at the time.
Totally agree. I still remember what he did to Bale at WHL last season, when he was at Blackpool. Something should be done about that sack of ****e before he cripples somebody
i dont blame Bale for diving..the ref cant do his job in protecting a star player against thugs like Adams and skrtel....couldnt play football so resorted to dirty fouls....bin dippers got to love them..
its pathetic when you argue for the sake of it...yellows or not....scholes is and was and has always been a durty player...just admit it...nobody is doubting his ability...its sad when you lose your voice because your too busy defending someone who couldnt give a **** about you...
Didn't Luke say that Parker was " a dirty player at times"? "At times" would suggest intent at some point, which I would disagree with, Parker is not sly, does not eye gouge on the blind side of the ref, does not retaliate when fouled/kicked/pushed, he is just a committed no fuss, no nonsense player. Roy Keane was all that...and dirty, Scholes was all that...and dirty.
That is an excellent point well made. Doing your argument proud. Well no - that's not at all true. It can be backed up. This was exactly my view of Parker before he joined Spurs. To be honest, seeing him week in week out, he is not as bad as I thought before. But still LDL's description is one I recognise. I would suggest that you, along with the rest of the people who went into mob-panic mode just weren't really focussing on what was actually being said. This is shown by the number of comments that are basically "Yeah - but what about Scholes, what about Keane?..." when LDL had already said that player who had that little bit of mettle are invaluable and any club wold want them. And (as LDL said) Parker is not a vicious or nasty player, like Keane. Sorry - this is sort of weird being LDL's defence lawyer here but I honestly can't stand to see such a massive pile of wrong-headedness go almost unchallenged by the vast majority of posters, many of whom have seemed quite sensible in the past, yourself included.
Bull...Scholes knew exactly what he was doing. He just hoped that the officials would be naive enough to buy into this"poor schlolesy can't tackle bollocks"
Well it's quite simple to check and to find that Scholes has played 470 league games whereas Parker has only played 332. Of course age comes into the equation. Because the older you are the more games you will have played. The more games you will have played the more bookings you will have got. Paul Scholes is a dirty twat, though. Much dirtier than Parker.
Actually given the role he plays (he's not meant to be the enforcer is he) it is astonishing that Scholes has more bookings. Parker's job is to tackle and break up play. Scoles is supposed to spray passes and score goals. Or am I wrong?
I *suspect* a number of Scholes bookings should have been red, and in fact he has benefited from the 'can't tackle' label. I don't believe in labels (and refs certainly shouldn't), each incident should be treated separately to a much greater degree ... but not claiming this is easy, I would still want common sense to be a major concern.
he should have been sent off for every leg breaker..i bet you he would have all of a sudden developed the skill of tackling....and we wonder why England never win anything...having a central midfielder that is celebrated because he cant tackle
Thanks for the info, Lenny. However, I would still maintain that age is not really a factor, here. It doesn't necessarily follow that the older you are, the more games you have played. Also, how many of the appearances were only for a short period as a sub, etc comes into it.
Er...You're the one who mentioned age - no one else. I believe LDL had mentioned "career length". And anyway the dis ingenuousness necessary to say "it doesn't necessarily follow that the older you are, the more games you have played..." is breath-taking. I'm struggling to know where to even begin with that one. I mean - you do acknowledge that there is a correlation between age of a footballer and the number of games he could possibly have featured in, right? I mean you do acknowledge that a player who is 18 is very unlikely to have made more appearances than a player who is 32, right? I can't believe I'm even typing this...
Scholes has got away with numerous fouls and should have been red carded far more than he has been I'll never forget a game at the Lane when he should have been off before half time, but was allowed to stay on the pitch and scored one of the goals as Utd won. One of many injustices against us over the years from UTD/refs. Re Parker, he's great for us, but sometimes does get carried away and do too many bad tackles, often silly ones on the edge of the area, for example. But his tackles aren't as dangerous as Scholes', in general.
Scholes has played for Man Utd for his whole career. Even if you leave aside the leniency that this gives him from officials, he'll have been in the superior team for most games. This should have lead to him making far less challenges on the whole, compared to Parker, who spent a lot of time at West Ham and Charlton. Then you have to factor in the different roles that they play, as you've suggested. This means that Scholes has a far, far worse record than Parker and we all know that it should've been worse still, if it wasn't for the whole 'he knows not what he does' bollocks.
