lookupsport

Nobody could argue that the injury sustained by Eduardo at the weekend was horrific.  However, once again the reaction from Arsene Wenger was well over the top in what was already an emotionally charged atmosphere.

His comment that “a killer only has to kill once to be a killer” and that Martin Taylor should be banned for life cannot be excused as heat of the moment stuff.  The tackle happened withing 2 minutes of the start of the game and he would have had over 2 hours to choose his words.  He obviously decided that these were the right words.  A subsequent statement issued by the club and NOT by Wenger himself retracting the comment is not enough.

First of all Taylor’s record shows he is not a dirty player (3 yellow cards in 74 games and only one red card over 8 years ago) and the replay shows that he was beaten by the speed of Eduardo’s feet.  This season alone has seen a number of much worse tackles, which have either gone unpunished, or have resulted in no injury.  It is nasty yes, but as much a fluke as anything that the injury was as bad as it was.

What annoys me though is the refusal of Wenger to see anything wrong (or “fail to see”) any incident, which involves his players stepping out of line but to continually whine in post match conferences about the slightest infringment against his own team.

It is time he and other high profile managers took off their rose tinted glasses when looking at their own teams and were actually honest.  If they can’t, then maybe the FA should step in - the comments made by Wenger were slanderous (which I suspect is why they were withdrawn), and he is lucky that Tayor doesn’t go after him.  As a minimum I would like to see Wenger charged by the FA.