In the words of José Mourinho’s puppet character on “I’m On Setanta Sports”, shut up, Wenger.
For those of you who haven’t seen the gruesome pictures or seen video, Arsenal front man Eduardo da Silva had his left leg nearly snapped at the ankle after a sliding challenge from Birmingham defender Martin Taylor. It took nearly ten minutes for trainers and medical staff to get da Silva off the field, and all reports indicate the Croatian has a badly broken leg. It didn’t exactly take a genius to come to that conclusion as anyone who has seen what happened could diagnose the injury instantly.
It would be irresponsible at this point to speculate as to how long da Silva will be out, but Arsene Wenger has said that “His injury is very, very bad. More than the season is over.”
The Frenchman also said “This guy (Taylor) should never play football again. What is he doing on the football pitch?”
“I’ve gone along with the idea for a long time that to stop Arsenal, you have to kick Arsenal. I knew that was coming for a long time now.”
Here’s where I have a problem with Wenger. There is simply no way Taylor is going to get a lifetime ban, no way. There was no malice whatsoever in the challenge, no intent to injure like we’ve seen in the past with some of Roy Keane’s attacks on opponents when he was still a player. On the match broadcast, play-by-play man Jon Champion even said he wasn’t sure if Taylor should’ve been sent off.
Personally, I thought it was a red card and the automatic three-match ban that comes with it is deserved. Anything more than that would really be harsh on Taylor because the reality is that this was just a freak incident. It was a mis-timed, late tackle. I’ve seen numerous tackles similar to this one in the past that haven’t even been red-carded. I think it’s wrong for Wenger to call for a lifetime ban for Taylor simply based on the extent of the injury to da Silva.
It’s not as if Taylor is a repeat offender and has a reputation for causing incidents like this. He showed remorse immediately after the challenge; as Birmingham boss Alex McLeish said, “Martin’s distraught about the lad’s injury. It’s certainly not in Martin Taylor’s make-up at all to commit a malicious tackle.”
In the NHL, a player can be given a two-minute penalty for high-sticking if he gets his stick in an opponent’s face and makes contact, but four minutes if that same incident draws blood. That’s just ridiculous; you can’t additionally penalize something because of a freak injury, or drawn blood in the case of hockey. It’s not fair to overreact to how badly someone is hurt because of a challenge, I believe you have to look at the challenge itself in a vacuum and go from there. With that said, make no mistake. I’m not condoning what Taylor did today by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m also not condemning him for it either.
If I was Arsene Wenger, who has a well-deserved reputation for being a sore loser and a whiner, I would worry about my own team instead of Martin Taylor. Wenger’s star young left back, Gaël Clichy, was directly at fault for giving up Birmingham’s late equalizer through his lack of focus and poor judgement and decision-making. These two points dropped could end up being what loses the title for Arsenal, yet after the game, Wenger is talking about the opposition and not saying anything about his own team.
Taylor’s fate isn’t in Wenger’s hands; he’s just wasting his time by chipping in his own two cents about the situation. I don’t want to hear this man in public anymore. He doesn’t say anything chastizing or harsh when his players, like Eboue and Flamini, go in recklessly on challenges like they’ve done in the past month or so, either nearly causing or actually causing serious injury, but when someone from another team does the same thing to a player on his team, he gets up in arms and has a fit. I’m sorry, I don’t have any time for that and it is embarrassing.
Shut up, Wenger!
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More on Wenger taking back his comments
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/7261153.stm
I hear the FA have moved quick to punish Taylor. He has a lifetime ban from top level football. Apparently he has got to stay with Birmingham for the rest of his carreer.
I think you’ll understand if I say “I doubt it” to those reports. The FA has never moved quick on ANYTHING, nor would I want them to when it comes to this.
There’s going to be no answer until Monday at the earliest.
Eric, thanks for posting that article.
I think that sums up most people’s feelings here. I’ve tried to say that Wenger shouldn’t have commented in the heat of the moment because he was still too attached to what had happened, and Wenger said as much in this article. He has a right to be upset and that’s fair, but shouldn’t call for such a serious punishment as a lifetime ban without removing himself a little bit from the situation and he was right to say what he said this morning was “excessive”.
I think I’ll take the word of Steve Bruce, Alex McLeish, and Jon Champion over the word of angry, hostile Arsenal fans any day of the week. Bruce and McLeish have both come out in defense of Taylor and his character, saying he’s a gentle person with no ill-will meant in his challenge today.
As I’ve said, a three-match ban seems appropriate to me, but I could see an additional two matches tacked on as well. He won’t be banned for life and rightly so.
As Jeff said, this whole episode is a sad sight and I never want to see anything like I did today again. Luckily this kind of thing is so rare.
Trust me, I’m not trying to be biased against Arsenal or Arsene Wenger, but I am trying to say that Wenger has a tendency to talk before he thinks; his mouth is one step ahead of his brain. He retracted his comments about a lifetime ban and I applaud him for doing so.
I wish all the best to Eduardo da Silva and hope he’ll recover quickly
http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=taylorsenasmijesiolu8.jpg
proof that your whole argument is full of it.
look at the guy’s grin with eduardo screaming in pain.
thanks for deleting my 7 comments before. you’re good at censoring. its sad you dont grant the freedom of speech that is granted to you with every one of your sad posts.
you cant even hope to achieve any of the things arsene was achieved in his honorable 58 years of life.
you know what, this isnt about banning a monster for life for a heartless tackle, this is about banning someone because they ended the career of a hard working individual. an individual with so much promise, overcoming adversity to making it to the top level of his profession and then getting it taken away within a second. the guy had family who relied on him, his pay check which was supposed to support his family in brazil and croatia. its more than getting an injury, its losing his future. and the future is priceless. wenger was right. look at this picture. a grin brought on from seeing someone in pain? is that reasonable?
http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=taylorsenasmijesiolu8.jpg
taylor being able to play football and supporting his family is not fair when he takes that ability away from someone else.
and they say if the nerves are torn, he wont walk again on his own. and that is just one of the sadest things to even contemplate. im sorry but even writing this is stirring so many mixed emotions between sadness and anger. threatening the ability for a young man to walk again is monstrosity.
Martin Taylor was trying to prove a point. Birmingham were going to play “tough.” The porbalem is he proved his point all too well. It isn’t about being “malicious.” It’s about the risks that lesser teams run when they try to WIN A GAME by jeopordizing the health of other hard working players. He meant to tackle Eduardo hard and he did so successfully. Now Birmingham and Taylor don’t want to face up to the consequences of such tactics. Eduardo was in no possesion to score, the only reason for the tackle was cynical win-at-all costs football.
I think Taylor should be banned for a season to make a point about tactics that are hurting football. Not because he is a bad person or a dirty athelete.
“A life time ban is serious”?
Gee, that’s bright!
And I suppose Eduardo’s ankle just about being severed is not?
Wenger should have “restrained” himself?
but taylor is “a nice gentle guy”.
Please get some kind of perspective, your stupidity is mind-boggling”, and the fact that you’d “take the word of Steve Bruce, Alex McLeish, and Jon Champion” says rather more about your gullibility and judgement than any intelligence on your part.
I’ll say again, this blog entry has marked you as one of the thickest bloggers around, and the fact that you actually are stupid enough to stubbornly leave it out on the web shows a complete lack of judgement and common sense.
As I said, mind-boggling, but perhaps you do need your ankle ripped of to hammer some perspective into that dense skull.
Alex Hleb,
Apparently you fancy yourself as some sort of “journalist” in the same way you believe I am not.
Let me tell you something that every journalist should know:
Speech such as that which you were using in the comments I was forced to delete isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Not everything you write applies to the “Freedom of Speech” concepts, there are restrictions to that and when you violate them, I have every right to censor what you say.
Included in those violations:
Obscenity
Profanity
Defamation
Fighting Words doctrine
When you write anything including any of those four things, as well as others that didn’t apply in this situation, your freedom of speech isn’t protected. What you say doesn’t have to be published and is, in fact, punishable by law.
I’m all for a good, lively debate. When it becomes personal and you use profanities, obscenities, and things of that nature, I don’t tolerate it and something has to be done to get rid of it.
im sorry but something has to be said when the meek are attacked.
n analogy:
If you are caught driving down the street in a reckless manner you are cited for driving without due care.
If you do the same and injure or kill someone, you are cited for reckless endangerment or manslaughter, regardless of intent.
If you run someone over out of malice, then you’re just a murderer.
Eduardo has received a career threatening injury, but most people seem to be more concerned with what Wenger said. Wenger was right. Martin Taylor may not have intended to break Eduardo’s leg, but there was malice…there was intent. Yeah, football is a contact sport and we all know that Taylor went into that tackle with the intent to get “BALL AND ALL.” He went in to inflict pain and send an early message. Thus, the next time Eduardo got the ball he would remember the pain of Taylor’s tackle and think twice before running at him again. Well, he got “ALL AND NO BALL.” Message received loud and clear.
My assessment is that the challenge was reckless with intent to hurt, but maybe not to injure and that Martin Taylor should not lace up for the rest of the season. Further, even if there was no intent, the tackle was executed with reckless abandon and the penalty should be proportional to the outcome.
Best wishes to Eduardo for a speedy and complete recovery. Both Arsenal and Croatia will sorely miss you.
p.s. - Just in case you haven’t seen the multiple compound fracture sustained by Eduardo, take a look…it’s just disgusting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3xLzrfioUA
Let me ask everyone who is calling for Taylors head right now, if it was one of your players from your club who had made that tackle and created that injury on another player would you be calling for his head as loud as you are for Taylors?
yes i would
let me ask you this, if the guy was cristiano ronaldo who got tackled and had his leg severed in 2, would you want the guy banned then?
Yes shakira graham, a tackle with consequences like that DOES warrant a harsh reaction.
People were having a full go at Eboue, when terry actually followed through onto Eboue’s foot.
Now THAT was an accident and unintentional, but that didn’t stop everyone and terry himself having a go at Eboue.
The fact that terry had a go was actually downright despicable considering that he went in on Cesc earlier in the game with very clear intent to hurt and injure Cesc!
Just because we see these tackles every week is not an excuse.
We have now seen the possible consequences.
This has to stop now, not continue to be excused.
A reckless challenge has probably ruined a career, but you’d rather complain about Arsene Wenger making a comment in the heat of the moment. Taylor can’t be a malicious player becuase his current and former manager, as well as a TV commentator said so! Look at the pictures!!! If you’ve ever played the game, you know the intent of that kind of tackle.
I’ve been a regular reader here and expected more from this site. I will not be coming back.
If you want proof of the intent, without the disturbing pictures, go to the Guardian unlimited story on the football frontpage. There is a photo while Taylor is in the air. There is only Eduardo’s leg in his sights, the ball is a foot or more away.
That photo alone, even without the terrible outcome, shows Taylor knew exactly what he was doing and it was not good.
Hey Shak, just an FYI, I showed the first contact picture to my ten year old. I will not show him the rest of the stills.
I told him if I ever see him go in studs up on someone, I would walk right out on the field and drag his a** right off the park.
Ask him yourself. He knows I am not kidding.
Moose
PS
If I see someone do it do him, God help me.
I think a lot people here talk regarding on his fan team, i´m not supporting any english football team, but i saw the tackle and it´s f…ing terrible, michael, Taylor deserves more than three matches if not ,that´s not football any more it´s kind of war, there are many interest (money) in this game, AND THEN ANYONE COULD DO IT AGAIN at least 10 matches off for Taylor, please,please,please but same if it happens to Rooney, gigs, lampard or TAYLOR!!!!!
I’m not defending Taylor, as I said before I think he should be banned for the rest of the season for this horror tackle. I just wanted to make sure there is no double standard happening when a tackle like this leads to an injury to another player. I hope and pray Eduardo makes it back at 100% and continue playing football as well, I’m no Arsenal fan but at this point it doesn’t matter, I want this kid to recover.
its eduardo’s birthday today by the way. he’s 25.
yesterday in the heat of the moment, i thought taylor should be banned for life, but its a little too much. i think taylor should be banned for atleast 20 games and the team be fined 100,000 pounds, or taylor should be banned for as long as eduardo isnt playing.
Why should Birmingham be fined for Taylors tackle? It’s not a situation of failure to control players crowding around the ref.
because it was all in the game plan to have players be that physical
That makes no sence, so you can fine a team for making a game plan to be physical with another team. Being physical with teams is part of the game, I dont think Taylor was told to take out Eduardo like that. There should be no fine for the Brummies, Taylor maybe but not for the team.
If this post wasn’t supposed to be an attack on Wenger then why use the phrase “shut up”? This whole post came off as being unsympathetic to how those of the Arsenal staff felt; yes, Wenger should of held his tongue but he had just seen one of his players suffer an injury that could be career ending.
I’m starting to notice that there is meaner tone to this site lately…
corey is right.
Arsene retracted those comments, what’s the point of arguing it? He was the coach of a player who was maliciously attacked and horribly injured….so what would you expect him to say after the match is over and his emotions are still very deep.
Michael, You ‘re really a shit. Look this picture, Taylor should be ban as long as the absentness of Eduvado at least.
http://arseblog.com/1pics/ed1.jpg
Ha, you just know if Birmingham get relegated again they won’t be seeing the likes of Bendtner and such helping them get back up again.. .
yeah. we wont be sending any more players to birmingham. we sent seb larsson, patrice muamba, nickolas bendtner, johan djourou over the past 3 seasons to help their team out.
Fabrice Muamba, but that’s ok.
i call him patrice in honor of patrice lumumba, and im sure he was named after him since theyre both from the congo. since its black history month i think we should remind ourselves of the work patrice did and his vision for africa.
I am a United fan and no fan of Wenger’s, but there’s no way you write this article on that day (or ever). Whatever colors you wear, imagine your youngest most promising star player getting his ankle snapped in two, and you will be baying for blood much louder than Arsene Wenger’s very tame comments. And he’s right - the only way some teams can contain Arsenal is to play like thugs. Taylor may have mistimed his tackle, and it might have amounted to nothing if Eduardo’s foot wasn’t planted, but you don’t have to finish that tackle - you can pull out when you see you’ve missed the ball - the only reason to finish the tackle is to make the quicker more talented footballer know they’re in for pain today. With that as a tactic, this result was coming sooner or later.
I think Arsenal should invest in better shinguards. Just my opinion.
wenger said that after he said those comments that he was just angered at the moment. you kno how crazy u can be when you are angered. he really doesn’t mean to be that vicious about taylor but you’ve got to feel for wenger. just bought eduardo, a fantastic player, last summer and eduardo’s at a new club and has a near 9 month injury
no need to hate the best manager in the world, man.
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