Hit them hard: Yes. Break their legs like little Eddie’s: No.
Published: 14 October, 2010
THE CROW
ARSENAL
EDUARDO returns to Arsenal next week with Shaktar Donetsk in the Champions League.
The fans will give him a warm welcome. How could they not for a player who recovered from such a horrific injury?
Deep down, the Gunners fans will know little Eddie wasn’t the same player after that horrible day in Birmingham when his leg collapsed.
A purple patch of goals came to a crashing halt that day and although he scored a few crackers on his return, he missed many chances to make the big impression.
He certainly never met that challenge of coming into a squad that had just lost Thierry Henry.
An impossible ask.
People fumed at Matthew Taylor, the Brum City player who cracked Eduardo’s leg open.
But think back to that day – the day Arsenal’s best hope of winning the Premiership in the past five year disintegrated – and you realise there was a bigger disappointment on the pitch.
When the Gunners conceded a dopey penalty in the last minute allowing Birmingham to draw, where was Arsenal’s experienced wise head William Gallas? Sitting on the half-way line stamping his foot like Rumpelstiltskin.
What if there had been a rebound? It was the worst football breakdown since Kevin Keegan’s ‘love it if we beat them’ performance and, like Eduardo, Gallas was never really seen in the same light again.
When Gallas makes his own return to Arsenal in a couple of weeks, the Gunners will hope to have him prancing around in frustration once more.
RICHARD OSLEY
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
A MANAGER that sends his team out on to the hallowed turf and says: “Make sure you give your opponents plenty of room and don’t tackle them too hard,” will not be in a job for long.
The game is being played much faster than ever before, the players are fitter and more highly tuned, making the likelihood of high-impact collisions inevitable.
As a player the first thing you want to do is let your opponent know they’re not going to get an easy match.
When I played (back in the day) it was an unwritten rule.
Getting hit early did one of two things, it made me shy away from the ball or it motivated me to get stuck in myself.
The same thing applies in all forms of the game today, and so it should.
So let’s stop the media whining and start using retrospective video evidence that will eventually become part of the game just like it has in rugby, cricket and tennis.
As for England’s hapless 0-0 debacle with Montenegro at Wembley on Tuesday, we all need to face the fact that England just aren’t good enough.
Tactically Fabio Capello has got so much wrong, but we can’t keep blaming him.
The fact that he’s a foreign manager is no excuse either!
What is painfully obvious is that players in an England shirt don‘t play the same as they do for their clubs.
TONY DALLAS