No team suffers from a worse case of righteous indignation when it comes to bad tackles than Arsenal. The trouble is that the Gunners have been on the end of a disappointing number of clunky or just plain dangerous tackles and this has clearly had a negative effect on their football. In turn this means that the fans tend to get up in arms quickly when an opposition player is guilty of a bad tackle on an Arsenal player.
I’m not saying that this kind of attitude isn’t without justification. Nobody wants to see English football pulled apart by players trying to hurt each other instead of focusing on their own technique. What’s more, in recent years Arsenal seem to have suffered more than others.
Just consider Ryan Shawcross’s horror tackle on Aaron Ramsey back in February 2010. The young Welshman was really growing into his role as a central-midfielder, but ended up having his development curtailed by a year thanks to a senseless tackle.
Then there’s Eduardo’s infamous double leg break suffered by Birmingham City’s Martin Taylor, which more or less put an end to the Croatian’s promising Arsenal career.
This season has seen 11 first team players have major surgery. That includes the likes of Jack Wilshere, Per Mertesacker, Kieran Gibbs, Bacary Sagna, Thomas Vermaelen, Abou Diaby and Emmanuel Frimpong. Whilst these weren’t all the result of bad tackles, Arsenal’s propensity for injury has exacerbated the malcontent that surrounds bad tackles.
My main concern is that Arsenal have lost the ability to judge each and every tackle by its own objective merits.
Which brings me to Scott Parker’s late challenge on Thomas Vermaelen during Sunday’s North London derby that earned the English midfielder a second yellow card and a sending off. As things stand, England’s media darling seems to have earned more credit for waiting around to see if Thomas Vermaelen was alright, than discredit for the badly timed, studs-in challenge itself.
This of course, has left many Arsenal fans bemused, but I for one hope there’s room for forgiveness here. Scott Parker is no Ryan Shawcross. He’s not even Sandro, who lurched around for the whole derby game unable to keep up with the pace, putting in a number of bad tackles. He mistimed his tackle and obviously felt regret after doing it.
Football is a sport that is dominated by a culture of arrogance and deception and anybody who breaks this mould is worthy of a smidgen of respect. Arsenal players will continue to suffer from mistimed tackles and will surely mistime tackles themselves. As such, there has to be some room for forgiveness.
As for Gareth Bale’s dive to win a penalty, that’s a different matter entirely…
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This is the same Scott Parker, who was appealing to referee Mike Dean to send Szczesny off when Bale dived for the penalty !. Watch the reply
‘Scott Parker’s no Ryan Shawcross’
Even when Shawcross broke Ramsey’s leg, you could be forgiven for thinking Shawcross was the lovechild of Mother Theresa and Ghandi from the way the press jumped to his defence. I bet Ed Milliband would love to hire whoever does Shawcross’ PR relations. This article only exists because Scott Parker is English. Had he been a foreigner who had done that to someone like Rooney you’d be screaming blue murder, just as the nation’s media did when Aldo Duscher accidentally broke Beckham’s metatarsal. Yes it was sporting of Parker to see if he was OK but it was a horrible tackle to begin with.
what a load of nonsense! bore off. where was his sportsmanship when he was pleading with mike dean to send someone off for the penalty?
To be honest, I dont think Arsenal fans are complaining much about the challenge.
Errr……..I forgot about it as soon as he walked off the pitch. You cannot compare the red card challenges by Shawcross and Taylor to what was a niggly but late challenge which earned a yellow card. A total non-story here.
As Naz said, I have not read anything fron about Parker’s mistimed tackle. It seems to be all in your head.
scott and modric 40 mil player were chasing shadows against what was not first pick arsenal mid field