The Lost Art of Tackling - Gunflash 538

The following article was published in the March 2010 issue of Gunflash - The Official Arsenal Supporters' Club Fanzine. The latest issue for April 2010 is out now. 


Whatever the rest of 2009-2010 has in store for Arsenal, there is the sobering knowledge that Aaron Ramsey will not be part of it. The serious injury to the highly rated young Wales midfielder - he broke his tibia and fibula in the 3-1 victory at Stoke last month - has not only cast a giant shadow over Arsenal’s season but revived memories of similar injuries to Abou Diaby four years ago and Eduardo two years ago. 
           
The good news is that the injury is not career-threatening. The bad news is that Ramsey faces at least eight months out of action and that unless something is done to curb the kind of reckless tackle by Ryan Shawcross which caused the trauma, it is likely that another serious injury will happen sooner rather than later. These sort of challenges are a consequence of too many Premier League managers thinking Arsenal are a soft touch, especially away from home, and encouraging over-aggressive methods to combat the flair and artistry of the Gunners.
       
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has seen it all before. The tackle by Martin Taylor at Birmingham which caused so much distress to Eduardo, not to mention his team-mates, and the even worse foul by Sunderland’s Dan Smith on Diaby at the Stadium of Light which was made near the touchline and came about 30 seconds from the end of a game in which Arsenal were winning 3-0. In a season when Arsenal have been suffering from an abnormal amount of injuries, this was the cruellest blow of all. Full marks to the Arsenal players who, having been visibly dismayed by Ramsey’s injury, had the character to go on and win the match with two goals in stoppage time. Their resolve, togetherness and fighting spirit bodes well for the rest of the season. 
        
Apologists for Shawcross point out that he did not mean to hurt Ramsey and that in a contact sport like football accidents will sometimes occur. On the first point I’m sure they are right, but the unnecessary force of the Stoke’s defender’s challenge ensured that it was an accident waiting to happen. The announcement of Shawcross’s promotion to the England squad for the game against Egypt only minutes after the Stoke-Arsenal match had finished was particularly unfortunate timing. 
      
The Ramsey February horror story highlights the lost art of tackling. Too many of today’s players seem unable to distinguish between fair and hard and foul and dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, there were dirty players 20 and 30 years ago and most clubs had their “enforcer” or “hard man”. But I can’t remember any of them committing the sort of challenges we are seeing all too often these days - fouls which endanger players’ livelihoods.
          
Tackling is as much part of football as shooting, passing, dribbling and heading. Long may it remain so, for I would hate to see the game become a non-contact sport. However, there is a proper and improper way of executing it. Sol Campbell gave an example of the former only last month when his brilliantly timed tackle thwarted Porto striker Falcao as he was about to shoot from close range. However, youngsters would be well advised not to follow the example of Birmingham centre-back Liam Ridgewell. His spiteful two-footed lunge at Wigan teenager James McCarthy last month took out the player and also the corner flag which flew up into the face of a linesman, who was unable to continue and replaced in the second half by the fourth official. Incredibly, Ridgewell was not punished by the referee and the FA, perhaps more incredibly, dismissed reports that they would act retrospectively. Ridgewell was also involved in an incident at the Emirates last October when his shuddering challenge led to Theo Walcott hobbling off. He also got off scot-free on that occasion, so he’s riding his luck.  It’s time that Birmingham manager Alex McLeish had a quiet word with the former Aston Villa defender and told him to calm down.
          
The importance of firm but clean tackling cannot be overstated. If you get a shot, pass or header wrong at least you don’t risk causing damage to somebody else, but if you tackle without, in Wenger’s words, due care and attention then the result, as we have seen recently, can be disastrous. In some cases the punishment does not fit the crime. Alex Song missed Arsenal’s recent matches against Burnley and Hull because of an accumulation of bookings, yet this was only one game fewer than Shawcross was banned for his tackle on Ramsey, for which he was sent off. Incidentally, Song’s yellow card against Stoke was harsh.
       
Ironically, Robbie Savage, now plying his trade with Derby in the Championship, was the innocent party to one of the worst assaults I’ve seen in many years. Ironic because Savage has had more than his fair share of run-ins with referees in a long, turbulent career. The guilty man this time was Gorka Pintardo, of Swansea, in the match at Pride Park last month. Pintardo’s wretched two-footed tackle thankfully missed his target and predictably provoked a mass brawl. That man of many clubs, Steve Claridge, commenting on The Football League show, rightly suggested that a suspension of three months would have been far more appropriate than three weeks for a challenge that could have inflicted grave damage.
           
Kieran Gibbs must be cursing the fact that his broken metatarsal has ruled him out for the rest of the season just when England manager Fabio Capello has a problem with finding a World Cup replacement at left-back for the injured ex-Gunner Ashley Cole. With Manchester City’s Wayne Bridge reluctant to play in the same team as John Terry, Aston Villa’s Stephen Warnock unconvincing in the League Cup final defeat by Manchester United and Everton’s Leighton Baines only average when gaining his first cap against Egypt, Gibbs, had he been fit, may well have called into the squad.
       
It’s touch and go whether Walcott, Arsenal’s only other World Cup candidate, will make the party to South Africa. His hat-trick in England’s 4-1 win over Croatia in World Cup qualifying in the autumn of 2008 seems a long time ago now. Since then a succession of injuries and the lack of a regular 90 minutes at Arsenal have drained his confidence and belief. After his performance at Wembley against Egypt when he was too often on the periphery, one fears Walcott has fallen behind in the pecking order to Shaun Wright-Phillips, Aaron Lennon and David Beckham. The Arsenal supporters are willing him to show some of the form that persuaded Wenger to buy him from Southampton for £5 million four years ago and there were signs in the home victory over Burnley - not least a terrific individual goal - that he is at last emerging from his trough.    

Injury Epidemic - Gunflash 536

The following article was published in the December 2009 issue of Gunflash - The Official Arsenal Supporters' Club Fanzine.


It is said that injuries even themselves out, but you could forgive Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger for not believing a word of it. The ankle injury to Robin van Persie in Holland’s friendly international against Italy last month was just one of a long series of misfortunes suffered by the Gunners. 
           
Already this season Arsenal have lost Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy, Lukasz Fabianski, Nicklas Bendtner, Theo Walcott, Johan Djourou, Denilson and Kieran Gibbs to injury for significant periods. Now Van Persie, the club’s best player last season and outstanding in this campaign, is another long-term casualty. The injury to the Dutch striker is more serious than first thought. Ruptured ligaments have ruled Van Persie out for four or five months and forced him to undergo surgery in Amsterdam. 
         
The bad news on the injury front seems relentless. Clichy's deputy at left-back, Gibbs, limped out of England's Under-21 match against Lithuania last month. Thankfully, the damage to Gibbs's right foot was no worse than severe bruising - a verdict that must have had Wenger sighing with relief. Unfortunately, Wenger's relief was short-lived, for on Gibbs's return to Arsenal's first team against Standard Liege, he broke the first metatarsal in his left foot and is expected to be absent for about three months. One has to feel sorry for the Arsenal manager, whose satisfaction with the team progressing to the knockout stage of the Champions League and topping their group, was tempered by Gibbs's rotten luck. And how Wenger must dread those irritating mini breaks for international football more than anybody because Gunners players always seem to return the worse for wear.
         
Is it sheer bad luck or are there other factors involved? Is there something in the way they train that makes Arsenal players more vulnerable to injury? Does their footwear offer sufficient protection to withstand the fiercest of challenges?  Or is it simply that Arsenal are one of the most fouled teams in the Premier League and therefore more likely to incur injuries?
       
Whatever the reason, since the club left Highbury for the Emirates stadium three years ago, the fates seem to have conspired against Wenger. Last season Arsenal were deprived of the services of Cesc Fabregas and William Gallas for significant spells. The season before that, Eduardo sustained his horrific leg injury against Birmingham which kept him out for the best part of the year, and then there was Tomas Rosicky, who spent 18 months on the treatment table and must have wondered if he was going to play competitive football again. Had these two stayed fit there is good reason to believe that Arsenal’s title challenge would not have faltered in 2008 and that they would have gone further in the Champions League than the unlucky quarter-final defeat by Liverpool. 
        
This season’s tale of woe includes the Poland goalkeeper, Fabianski, and Walcott, who were injured almost immediately after returning from long absences. Walcott aggravated a long-standing shoulder injury playing for England Under-21s in the summer, which was a blow to his chances of going to the World Cup in South Africa with the senior side next year, and then, on his return to Arsenal’s first team in October, damaged medial knee ligaments in the home game against Birmingham after a shuddering challenge by Liam Ridgewell, which surprisingly went unpunished by Lee Probert, the referee. 
         
Much to my dismay, the former Ipswich, Tottenham, Manchester United and Scotland forward Alan Brazil, talking on his early-morning radio show, saw nothing wrong with Ridgewell’s tackle. “He got the ball, it’s as simple as that,” he said. Actually, Alan, it’s not as simple or as straightforward as that. The fact that Ridgewell got the ball was more by luck than judgment before he clattered into Walcott, leaving him writhing on the turf. It was a reckless tackle and Brazil was talking tosh. Following his logic, Brazil would presumably see nothing wrong with a two-footed tackle as long as the player touched the ball. By contrast, Graham Poll, the former high-profile referee and a frequent guest on Brazil’s show, thought Ridgewell’s tackle was worthy of a red card. I wouldn’t go quite that far - yellow would have been more appropriate - but it was the kind of challenge that made you wince and that football can do without.  
     
One of my wishes for 2010 is that Arsenal can go through a whole month without a serious injury. If they can, they will probably end a trophy drought which has lasted since their FA Cup final victory over Manchester United in 2005. But the way their luck is going, Wenger would be advised to assume that won’t happen and to make a signing - or two - in the January transfer window. With Emmanuel Adebayor being sold to Manchester City during the summer and Van Persie and Bendtner confined to the sidelines, Arsenal are left with only one out-and-out forward, Eduardo, as they enter the time of the season that often sorts out the men from the boys. One wonders whether the promising young Mexican, Carlos Vela, can step up to the plate or whether Wenger is tempted to recall Jay Simpson and Henri Lansbury from their loans to Queens Park Rangers and Watford respectively. Both players have shone for their Championship clubs.
          
Perhaps Arsenal can prosper without outside help. Wenger has unwavering faith in his squad as well as his first choice XI and one of the encouraging aspects of the season is that the club’s goals have been shared around. This is a tribute to the fluidity and variety of Arsenal’s football and if they continue to score at a similar rate they will top the century mark at the end of the season. Fabregas’s finishing has been fabulous, fellow midfielder Abou Diaby has weighed in with some valuable goals, as has Andrey Arshavin, and there have been important contributions from the centre-backs, Thomas Vermaelen and Gallas, who are such a threat from set-pieces and have scored for their respective countries, Belgium and France, as well as their clubs. Van Persie, of course, was a persistent marksman until his untimely injury.
      
January will be a fascinating month, with the reopening of the transfer window and the effect on the leading Premier League clubs of the African Cup of Nations. Arsenal will be without Alex Song and Emmanuel Eboue, although Chelsea, who are formidably strong, will lose the most players. On the other hand, Manchester United won’t be adversely affected and the fact that they are well placed to pounce if Chelsea falter, despite missing Cristiano Ronaldo and seldom looking convincing, will set the alarm bells ringing among the other contenders for the Premier League title, especially as United nearly always finish the season like an express train. I suspect Arsenal must do the same if they want to finish above either of these heavyweights.