ok, Lets start with Martin Taylor’s horror tackle on Eduardo. Alex McLeish was particular disgraceful in his comments, calling Martin Taylor’s red card ‘harsh’. Harsh? Perhaps they haven’t seen the images of the tackle up close?. It's ridiculous to hear people defend the tackle. It's one thing to say "OK, he doesn't deserve more than a 3 or 5 match ban", it's another to say things like "the tackle was harmless, he was just unlucky", or "it looks worse than it is because he got injured". This logic is pathetic, and it's ridiculous.
Take a look at Ashley cole's tackle on Tottenham's Alan Hutton here.Cole went studs-up on Tottenham full-back Hutton at White Hart Lane, sparking a furious reaction on the touchline.Referee Mike Riley gave Cole a yellow card inspite of cole turning his back on the referee.From my viewpoint, Cole was extremely lucky not to be sent off, as Wayne Rooney was for his challenge on Niko Kranjcar in the FA Cup
There are many players like Makelele, Roy Keane , Robbie Savage, Joey Barton, Steven Gerrard and so on that have gotten away with worse, more intentional tackles, but only because the other players avoided injury.
One can appreciate English mentality of wanting to always win, but this has to be done the right way. It should not become like Italy, where the game stopping every 5 minutes. But that bad tackles and bad behavior are properly punished.
