simple, yet childish desire to inflict bodily harm on our young
players.
We've seen them all, at Birmingham, at Stoke to mention but a few. But
Saturday's incident was glaring enough for an impartial observer to
realise that Arsenal players and feeble players in general in the
Premier League aren't been offered the sort of protection necessary
for their survival - the playing ground isn't level and something has
to be done and pretty fast, if we want to see these crop of players grace the
colours of their respective teams in the long-run.
The referee's are awake to their duties but it's crystal clear that
the FA, is turning a blind eye to the nefarious activities of
tackle-happy defenders who are giving a wrong impression of the
Barclays Premier League to future players.
Hull City's George Boateng, is undoubtedly a tough-tackling and experienced defender.
Infact, he's very commited to the Hull cause.
But I am really not in the mood to commend the player for his heroics,
I am asking that he owns up to the glaring fact that his tackle was
pre-meditated instead of hiding under the cloak of his controversial
manager, who as expected will definately come to the rescue of his captain not minding the consequence of his player's action.
George Boateng, who recently won an appeal after he was adjudged by referee
Lee Probert, to have used his elbow to gain unfair advantage on M.
Gamst Pedersen during their match with Blackburn, more than a month
ago, albeit he was vindicated after replays showed his elbow didn't make
contact with Pedersen.
But against Arsenal on Saturday, there's no way in the World he's
going to contemplate filing an appeal after engineering the costly
trick on Sagna himself.
Is it our fault that we play beautifully and are a delight to watch?
If the idiot has played his cards well, would he be battling
relegation with a team like Hull City who have never had it so good?
Let's face it - we've only lost twice this season apart from our
home/away poor form against Manchester United and Chelsea this season,
so I didn't expect our trip to the Kingston Comms Stadium to be a
stroll in the park. And as well, I didn't expect a defender as
experienced as Boateng to engage in such an unnecessary
challenge that was clearly capable of ending Sagna's
illustrious career and adding another injury problem to our extensive list.
Bendtner was the first to dissaprove of the malicious tackle that the
so-called leader of the Tigers intentionally launched at Bacary Sagna,
after he realised he couldn't pick on the towering striker.
The Danish striker admitted that he feared that Boateng has inflicted
a Ramsey-like injury to his team mate and one of our star performers
this season. The Dane was relieved to see his team mate rise to his feets and he executed his duties with more passion and zeal than he did 44 minutes earlier.
Bacary was in pain, but every gooner has to thank his stars for the
player's almost immediate recovery. Although we could sense the
discomfort he was going through, been on his feets was a testimony to
the resilience and commitment we've shown since that February blip
that resulted in our been ruled out of the title contention.
Bendtner was infuriated with the defender's unwarranted tackle, the 22-year-old striker
condemned Boateng, for his unsporting behaviour and maintained that the
referee's decision to send him off was justified: "It could have been
another bad one, but luckily nothing happened," he said. "It was a
poor challenge. You can see the stud marks up Bac's knee."
"My eyes Ok now," Bendtner continued. "I told him you can't poke
someone in the eye when the ref isn't looking, that's not fair. I told
him that and he got a bit upset. He took it out on Bac and rightly got
a red card. From then on the game settled down."
Our title challenge has suffered a lot of setbacks and our players equally have endured a lot of pain due to tackles that aren't only illegal but also unwarranted for. It's time we told our detractors that:
Though Eduardo's tackle demoralised us, Ramsey's unfortunate incident has been an inspiration and future tackles won't scare us.
Go Gunners . . . Show 'em your name is engraved on the title already.
