Oh look this again, I knew we were playing Blackburn this weekend and pointed it out in another thread earlier this week. Am I surprised about the double standards from fans and media alike just a month and a half after the WC Final?
Should all teams be FAIR, while being HARD with their chosen style of play against us, then neither Wenger nor any Arsenal fan can or more importantly wants to complain. If a team is hard, the tackles clean whilst the bullying there, no issue whatsoever.
However when teams take the Sam Allerdyce approach to football and just blatantly foul away then of course there is a problem. What manager wouldn't raise it? There's a fine line between deliberately physical play, and not being good enough so the less technically able side ends up fouling constantly.
I don't agree with him at all, Wenger wants football to be a non-contact sport as it suits his teams style of play. The likes of Blackburn, Bolton etc know this is their weak spot and close them down and continually press them to disrupt their play. I think the balance the refs have at the moment is spot on as dangerous tackles do almost always result in a red card.
That's the point, if this is all that Blackburn, Bolton etc. did then there'd be no issue. Watch our games against them, and you realise that it usually is never the case.
Wenger not wanting it to be a non contact sport is just utter garbage.
Would you agree that the likes of Stoke, Birmingham, Blackburn etc. are over-physical in their style of play? Some would say that it's impossible for smaller clubs to be sucessful without imploying such tactics.
It's not really a tactic when there's constant fouling. Fouling is exactly that - something deemed illegal within the game that should be punished.
I find myself agreeing with Wenger on this very rare occasion. Though I feel, as he does, that it is up to the referrees to stamp it out of the game rather than the Clubs. If they can get away with it, of course they'll do it. They'd be stupid not to.
Totally agree, which is why there are of course a few approaches to it.
Arsenal should stand up for themselves. Larger players - but should the league discriminate against smaller guys because they can't stand up to these fouls?
Go down easily - like fouling it's up to the refs to spot this, and teams up and down the country do it all the time. It's another 'if they can get away with it' situation. We need somebody like Gerrard, Torres, Drogba, Rooney who not only have a history of going down easily, but they create a situation where halfway through the match, the opposition visibly don't WANT to tackle them. We have..Eboue, says it all really
.
Neither are right, but both approaches have a sense of 'can't beat 'em, join 'em'.
All in all it's pretty funny really. This physicality gone wrong approach to the game has bred players which are hard but so technically lacking it's worrying. Fans love them (I remember who got more sympathy last year when Shawcross broke Ramsey's leg), but it's these same fans who wonder why on earth we're utter garbage at international tournaments. Perhaps a wholesale change of view is required..*wink*.
