Steve Sidwell (Fulham) Mon 1st April 2013 v. QPR DISMISSED AFTER 78 MINUTES - STRAIGHT RED Sun 7th April 2013 v. Newcastle SUSPENDED Sat 13th April 2013 v. Aston Villa SUSPENDED Wed 17th April 2013 v. Chelsea SUSPENDED Sat 20th April 2013 v. Arsenal DISMISSED AFTER 11 MINUTES - STRAIGHT RED Sat 27th April 2013 v. Everton SUSPENDED Sat 4th May 2013 v. Reading SUSPENDED Sun 12th May 2013 v. Liverpool SUSPENDED Should we have one?
Nothing wrong with a hard tackling mid fielder. Southampton had a few on Saturday - but they weren't a dirty side
true, Southampton are to be credited for their attitude and actions on the pitch. I know there was a couple of dodgy free-kicks given but when Ash slid in on a Southampton player in the box, he clearly made the effort to stay on his feet when, to me, it seemed like he could easily have gone down and earned a penalty.
There's a difference between hard tackling and stuff that's out of control. Tackling is a fine art, that can be fierce, but controlled, and exquisitely timed; but there are players (and although I can't ever remember seeing this one) that have no idea what that means, have no finesse, no sense of control, no sense of timing and quite frankly do what they do because they are either too slow in the feet or the brain to do anything other than act out of desperation. We all have a cow of Suarez biting, and although I'm not condoning Suarez, it is the players that week in week out take liberties and risk injury to others that need to be dealt with far more immediately. Having said all that, I remember the likes of Ron Harris, Billy Bremner, Norman Hunter, Tommy Smith (there's plenty of good video on Youtube) that could just make you cringe at some of the stuff they pulled. By today's standards they are .... vicious ... but they rarely found themselves caught out of position, and although they tackled fiercely nothing was ever out of control or desperate .... they always looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. I wonder how they would fare in today's game.
I'm sure everyone feels the same way TLF. It was something that was mentioned on Match of the Day, so I was just pointing out how things can go very wrong if your 'enforcer' gets a bit too forceful.
