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Sorry Arsene, You’ve got this one wrong.

Published by Ian John on February 28, 2010

I’m sure even the most ardent anti-Arsenal fan will feel great sympathy for Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey after he sustained what looks like a broken leg or broken ankle, following a clash with defender Ryan Shawcross, during Arsenal’s 3-1 victory over Stoke City at the Britannia stadium.

The incident, which had unsettling undertones of Eduardo’s horror injury two years ago, saw Arsenal players visibly shaken by the injury and led to Shawcross receiving a straight red card for the tackle and leaving the field in tears after he understood the extent of the injury his tackle had caused.

Somewhat predictably, following the game, Arsene Wenger was asked for his reaction to the injury and seizing the opportunity to don the mask of “poor hard done by victim” he grasped the opportunity with both hands, stating;

“I’m not very happy with the tackle, we know what we are expecting, a battle everywhere, but we have now lost three players on horrendous tackles and I refuse to believe it’s always coincidence.

“I don’t believe it when you are hit as many times as we are. I just believe in what I see and when you see a player getting injured like that it’s not acceptable. Commitment is right, but that is not right.”

Not wishing to lessen the impact or severity of Ramsey’s injury, nor the misfortune that the player and club have had in dealing with three injuries like this in the space of five years, but is this implicit criticism of Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross particularly fair?

Last evening, I missed the game, so when I heard news of the incident this morning, I managed to find a replay of the incident on a website. Sky Sports News (somewhat shamefully jumping on the bandwagon) refused to show the incident for fear of upsetting the genteel sensibilities of their viewers. Shame then the Sky Website has no such empathatic compunction, happily showing a picture of a lamp-post which had fallen on a baby’s pushchair, killing the baby. In the picture you can see the lamp-post, crushed buggy and perhaps even more distasteful, the medical team in shot just behind it, tending to the critically injured one year old. Double standards of the quality that perhaps only egomaniacs, football managers and politicians usually attain.

So I watched the incident with interest, expecting to see another over the top horror tackle like Martin Taylor’s on Eduardo. What I saw was two fully committed players going for the ball, Ramsey being just the quicker, Shawcross clattering into him with unfortunate results. It wasn’t pre-meditated, it wasn’t done on purpose to hurt Ramsey at all. It was simply that Ramsey was quicker and Shawcross’s momentum caused the horrific clash. It was mistimed, not malicious. As such, I have no idea why it merited a red card. (Cue : Throng of Arsenal fans wanting to hunt me down and chop my head off because I disagree with the Our Lord Arsene) A yellow certainly. The fact that the challenge was at such a high speed caused the injury, however it was no worse than many other challenges you will see in the Premier League this weekend. The only difference is that this time, Aaron Ramsey was very, very unlucky.

Shawcross was stunned by what happened, in tears by the time he was walking off the pitch, but unlike Taylor, I don’t feel there was genuine malice in his actions. It was a mistimed tackle, nothing more, nothing less and sometimes when they happen, bad things occur. The list is a long one of players who have suffered similar injuries, Djibril Cisse (twice), Alan Smith, Henrik Larsson, David Busst, Stephen Warnock (twice), Luc Nilis and Kieran Dyer. It happens, it is part and parcel of the game. It doesn’t mean a vendetta against one club and it doesn’t mean every defender who makes a tackle is automatically guilty of serious, vindictive and nasty foul play.

Sometimes Arsene, it does “just” happen.

Image Courtesy of ***fid aka Theo*** on Flickr.com

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