While his Wolves side weren’t able to earn a valuable victory over West Ham, Mick McCarthy was able to hit back at Danny Murphy, with a comment in a press conference summing up the universal disagreement that has followed the Fulham midfielders attack on managers who ‘encourage’ bad tackles.

When asked what he thought of no player from either side picking up a booking, McCarthy responded with a sarcastic comment. He said: “I asked the lads to go and knock seven bells out of everyone like I normally do what the hell were they playing at?

“It’s a shame because we went out and played free flowing football for 45 minutes and were rampant.”

I must admit I think McCarthy has responded in exactly the right way. While Tony Pulis defended himself and the actions of his squad with a well worded statement, McCarthy laughs off the accusations with his typical sarcasm.

For me, while Murphy’s comments may have been taken slightly out of context,  they were laughable. He was never going to achieve anything by attacking individual manages, and there was no need to name names

In reality we all know that Stoke, Blackburn and Wolves are amongst the most imposing and physical sides in the league, just look at Karl Henry’s horror challenge at Wigan. But the problem with overzealous tackles isn’t limited to these three teams, as we saw with Jack Wilshere and his desperate lunge yesterday.

Part of me feels that in years gone by there wouldn’t have been such a fuss made of these clumsy tackles and I do feel reluctant to write an article that could only add to the media storm surrounding tackles which is developing on a day to day basis.

But it is a problem which has crept in to our game. Every weekend we are now seeing a wreckless lunge by somebody. Personally I don’t buy in to the argument that this is down to poor tackling coaching.

I think the problem is down to the importance of winning in the Premier League. There is so much at stake in the Premier League at the moment in every single game; desperation really does play a big part. When players are desperate, lunges creep in and that is when injuries occur.

I think the dangerous tackle is more down to temperament rather than technique and if we are going to stamp it out, coaches need to work on the psychology of players and make sure they don’t get caught up in the emotion of games.

What do you think? Why are we seeing so many bad tackles at the moment?

In the least shocking news of the week, Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel picked up yet another red card for a shockingly bad tackle. This time it was a sliding tackle and though the challenge was one-footed, Mikel came in with his studs up (and nowhere near the ball) on Everton’s Phil Neville.

This was the fourth red card Mikel has received in about a season and a half of being a Chelsea player. Of course Avram Grant took his player’s side “I will not speak of the red card,” Grant spoke. “But if it was a red card, many players who were given yellow cards should have had a red card too. I will not speak about it. I don’t say that I have nothing to say about it. I have a lot of things to say about it.”

Grant should not be defending a player with a history of poor tackles. Instead, he should be working with him on the training ground or sending him down to the reserves for further work. I hate to single him out as he is far from being the only player to be guilty of these dangerous tackles but timing is everything in life, and in tackling too.

There is no question that Mikel is a phenomenal athlete and is a fine passer of the ball but his other skills are questionable. He does not seem to have a grasp of the fundamentals of tackling and marking (e.g. his recent hacking of Peter Crouch) or he has been trained using videos from the 70s when this sort of thing was tolerated and encouraged. In this era, where the players are supposed to be protected from dangerous tackles, he could be viewed as a liability to his team.

Steve Sidwell, brought on soon after Mikel’s dismissal, also deserves some scorn for what the Independent described as “an attempt at arthroscopic surgery” on Lee Carsley’s knee.

What do you think? Are the rules strict enough? Too harsh? To me want to see more of these bone-crunching tackles?