The Rich Tapestry of Life

Welcome to my page of random mutterings.

Those of you who know me will see a calm veneer. You will also know that I'm easily annoyed. I think it's healthy.

I allow myself to be annoyed most of the time. It doesn't take much. People who use the letter 'H' twice in 'Southampton', txt spk, Tom Jones, and suchlike annoy me in equal measure.

Here you will find tidbits that annoy me, amuse me, and enlighten me, and I shall share them with you, to annoy, amuse, and enlighten you.

Monday 18 October 2010

Modern Football, Danny Murphy, Indiscipline, Diving, and the Offside Rule.

THE OFFSIDE LAW

First of all, I'm not sure that Mark Hughes should be wagging the finger at referees and linesmen about the application of the laws of the game given as he spent a fair part of his career breaking them - class player though he was.

So the offside rule. To me, it makes not a jot of difference that my beloved Spurs had the benefit of Mike Dean's decision on Saturday, the offside rule is a total joke.  Quite why FIFA had to complicate a perfectly good, workable rule that everyone understood  is beyond me.  I accept that it was done to promote attacking football, but clearly the interpretation of the rule is so blurred now that no one really knows what's going on.  There is an art to defending.  Arsenal under George Graham are a perfect example, it helped them to great success in the late 80's and early 90's.  You don't have to be a fan of the type of football - and God knows I'm not - to appreciate that it was effective, and that his team had the discipline and the know-how to do it to great effect.  FIFA go on about how referees should have discretion in their application of the laws of the game. The old offside rule was simple in that a linesman or a referee could use their discretion as to:

a) Whether or not they felt a player was interfering with play by standing in an offside position

Or:

b) Whether or not a player was seeking to gain an advantage by standing in an offside position.

Or:

c) Whether or not a player was just plain offside.

What FIFA have done by talking about phases of play and so on has done nothing other than to confuse fans, players, and officials into having 101 different views, none of which appear to be completely correct.  The Spurs goal on Saturday should not have stood.  The second Everton goal yesterday should not have stood. Both William Gallas and Aiyegbeni Yakubu were standing in offside positions, and I honestly believe that they are equally offside. None of this rubbish that neither of them touched it the ball.  Gallas threw a leg at the ball in the hope he was going to get a touch to it.  Yakubu was standing directly in front of Pepe Reina, blocking his view.  In my view, the way to deal with the issue is to give discretion back to the referees and linesmen.  Go back to applying the offside rule sensibly - if you're offside and hanging a leg out for a ball, or if you're stood in front of the goalkeeper blocking his view, accept that you're offside and get on with it. However, while I disagree with Mike Dean's decision to allow Spurs' second goal on Saturday, I applaud him for having the balls to apply the laws of the game as he saw fit at the time.

DANNY MURPHY's BIG PIE-HOLE

Now, Danny Murphy and his views on dangerous tackles and indiscipline. He really ought to keep his daft mouth shut on matters of discipline.  Particularly when you consider that I for one can remember last season in the Europa League when he got himself sent off for a moment of sheer petulance in the last minute of a tie with Shakhtar Donetsk.  It's all very well, Danny, if you're whiter than white yourself and you come out with these remarks about the behaviour of other teams and their staff. But for someone who currently sits at number 58, with 46 yellow cards, on a list of all 2016 players ever to have been booked in the Premier League, you might want to start weeding your own garden before looking over the fence at those of your fellow professionals.  Enough said about that, really.

MAROUANE CHAMAKH

On to Mr Chamakh and his Tom Daleyesque display of diving so far this season.  Funnily enough, I can see why the referee was conned on Saturday into giving Arsenal their penalty.  Doesn't alter the fact that it was a dive, and diving is cheating.  Mr Chamakh has won 5 penalties this season for Arsenal.  Some teams don't get 5 penalties in a season. I can think of at least 3 of those penalties where the consensus among fans - even those of the team he represents - and pundits alike was that Mr Chamakh had gone down like he had been clobbered by a giant invisible frying pan.  But fair play to him, a 60% cheat-to-conversion-rate isn't bad for a team with a manager who repetitively extols the virtues of fair play.  Which brings me on to my next point.

ARSENE WENGER

I'm not going to sit here and batter Arsene Wenger for the sake of battering him.  After all, a lot of what he says is pure common sense, and to argue with every point of view of someone who has had his success is just ridiculous.  So believe me when I say that I'm not writing this as an Arsene Wenger hater, or just because it makes me feel better as a Spurs fan if I give the Gooners and their manager a bit of stick.  I'm writing this because I hate some of the things Arsene Wenger says.

Mr Wenger:  It simply is not good enough to sit in judgement of the style of football played by everyone else just because it no longer fits in with your idea of how the game 'should' be played - and I'll tell you why.  When you were winning things, it was perfectly acceptable for members of your squad to behave like animals.  It hasn't always been quick passing and silky skills, Arsene

Patrick Vieira - 78 yellow cards, 8 red.

Gilles Grimandi - 23 yellow cards, 3 red.

Martin Keown - 49 yellow cards, 5 red.

Emmanuel Petit - 15 yellow cards, 3 red.

(To name only 4)

Now, we could go into the stats a bit deeper and analyse how many appearances they each made - not that many in the case of Grimandi and Petit - but what'd be the point? None, because the point is already proven.  Anyway, just to drive it home a bit further, and this is the part that makes any rhetoric he comes up with about everyone else completely obscene in my view, Arsene Wenger presides over a club that, in the all time discipline league, sits in 42nd place out of a possible 44 teams.  Worse than Bolton, Wimbledon, Blackburn, Stoke, Leeds, Leicester, Birmingham, Wolves and everyone else apart from Chelsea and Everton. 

I don't entirely disagree with Mr Wenger's view on tackling.  What I will say is that it was fine for Arsenal to behave like the very teams he is so quick to accuse of using thuggish tactics when it was bringing him success and silverware.  It was fine to miss the bad tackles.  It was fine for him to defend Patrick Vieira when he spat in Neil Ruddock's face after having been sent of during a game against West Ham United.  English fans aren't stupid, Arsene, we don't forget these things.  Even recently, and on more than one occasion, he has seen fit to walk from the dugout straight down the tunnel with his nose in the air instead of offering his hand to the manager of the opposition.  All too frequently it appears that he doesn't practice the very things he perpetually harps on about.  Where's the fairness, respect, sportsmanship, grace?  Maybe it's a good thing that he was put in a position on Saturday where he couldn't defend the indefensible.

To make my position completely clear on all of the above, and before I get a whole shitload of Gooners coming down on me like a ton of bricks, I will offer you a summary - and this will be as balanced as everything above.

No one team is whiter than white.  No one player is completely innocent.  I don't believe that players fall into such tight stereotypes as people put them in.  I don't believe that any player goes onto the field of play with a mind to hurt a fellow professional.  I don't believe that Jack Wilshere intentionally went in studs-up on Nikola Zigic on Saturday.  I don't believe that Ryan Shawcross, Karl Henry, or Nigel De Jong deliberately went in to break the legs of Aaron Ramsey, Bobby Zamora, or Hatem Ben Arfa.  The point is that Zigic could have been injured just as badly as a result of a mistimed, ill-judged moment of over-exuberance from one of the finest young players this country has seen for years.  What makes a  mockery of Mr Wenger is that this player happens to be one of his own, and it appears that not even he, the great Arsene Wenger, can keep his own players from making grave errors of judgement.

Tony Pulis, Mick McCarthy, or Sam Allardyce do not have their teams playing a style of football that fills me with joy.  However, I don't have to like it.  Football is a contact sport and should remain that way.  We each have different ideas of how it should and shouldn't be played, but it's not for the purists of this world to tell people like Pulis, McCarthy, and Allardyce that their style is wrong.  

It most certainly is not the place of players and managers who have struggled to maintain their own discipline and that of their teams down the years to be acting like judge and jury on the perceived ill conduct of their fellow professionals.

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