It seems that DeJong’s wild tackle on Ben Arfa, which was judged a fair tackle and broke the Frenchman’s leg in two places, is starting to reverberate around the halls of football.
Danny Murphy – blasts three British managers
And Fulham’s Danny Murphy has come out said he blames three Premier League managers in particular, for the rough play that now is getting to be too common place in England.
Interestingly, the three managers are all British – Englishmen Sam Allardyce of Blackburn and Mick McCarthy of Wolves, and Welshman Tony Pulis of Stoke.
Danny Murphy yesterday criticized some of the “brainless” tackling that goes on in the Premier League, and accused Sam Allardyce, Mick McCarthy and Tony Pulis, of being responsible for that trend.
Watch out now for all three of them to come out and confess their complete innocence, and then attack Danny for having the cheek (we would say courage) to even say it.
Of course Fulham lost Bobby Zamora this season to a broken leg, following a challenge by Wolves’ madman Karl Henry, who was then sent off for trying to do the same thing to Jordi Gómez on Saturday at Wigan – with another horrific tackle, and he rightly received a straight red card.
This is what Murphy said:
“The pace some of the players are going into tackles at is ridiculous. There are no brains in the players doing that. I don’t believe they are going out to break the legs of their opponents but there’s no logic or intelligence in what they are doing.”
“You get managers sending teams out to stop other sides from playing, which is happening more and more.” “Stoke, Blackburn and Wolves – you can say they’re doing what they can to win the game – but the fact is that the managers are sending the players out so pumped up that inevitably there are going to be problems.”
“The thing I think people miss is that it’s the managers who dictate what the players do and how they behave. If you have a manager , but in control of his team, who doesn’t allow these things to go on, you have a more disciplined team.”
While Newcastle have appealed to the English FA to have DeJong punished for his tackle, it looks like the English FA will hide behind their rules (as usual), and say they cannot do anything about it, because referee Martin Atkinson thought the tackle was perfectly fair.
Whew – that was close.
If Ben Arfa’s broken leg leads to the English FA doing something constructive about the thugs out there, who will continue to maim other players, then something good will have come out of it.
Comments welcome.
10 comments so far
stestickle
Oct 8, 2010 at 12:50 PM
Comment #1Well said danny lad.
MacToon
Oct 8, 2010 at 12:53 PM
Comment #2Can’t possibly mean our old manager FSA the next manager of Milan, Real or even England! (unfortunately he could one day become Englands manager 🙁 )
The Premier league has improved year after year and we’re lucky we can watch some great football however the general standards set by the ref’s has remained pretty poor and the FA too appear weak time and time again.
We’ve gone from thugs on the terraces to them being on the pitch, or as Murphy would lead you to believe, managers!
Ericles
Oct 8, 2010 at 1:33 PM
Comment #3Timely comment by Danny Murphy. Just as much as we need to kick racism out of football we also need to kick thuggery out of football on and off the pitch. The gladiatorial approach by some managers can only bring the best league in the world into disrepute. We need two good things to come out of Ben Arfa’s injury – a cleaner game and he signs for us permanently in 2011!
wallsendgreen
Oct 8, 2010 at 2:21 PM
Comment #4Would not be surprised if Danny Murphy gets done for bringing the game into disrepute
ende
Oct 8, 2010 at 6:23 PM
Comment #5Ericles, that’s a really good idea mate.. use the anti-racism campaign as a model for the anti-thuggary campaign. Like it.
Spuggy
Oct 8, 2010 at 6:50 PM
Comment #6http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUnRbFkB16k&feature=fvwk
Says it all really.
stuart no9
Oct 8, 2010 at 11:16 PM
Comment #7all the refs need to do now is , any thing that looks like a leg breaking tackle even if there is contact or not , straight red, off , keep doing it and keep doing it, soner or later managers will get the message ,when they cant put a team out,and spend all week in training learning how to tackle
Brutooon
Oct 9, 2010 at 2:12 AM
Comment #8players who cause other players to injured should be ban as long as the player concern is injured
Rotonda heights
Oct 9, 2010 at 10:48 AM
Comment #9Couldn’t agree more with danny.
Those 3 managers mentioned are a disgrace to football and any modicum of football they actually play is totally incidental to the thuggery that is their hallmark.
I thought Stoke would take Benny out, but a week later it’s de Jong ! Didn’t take long for some animal to remove one of the very few flair players in the English game.
Rotonda heights
Oct 9, 2010 at 10:49 AM
Comment #10Brutoon, that’s not a bad idea, I like it.