Steve Bruce's Excuses

Mark Hughes has come you and said that Steve Bruce has basically made a reyt tit of himself by trying to defend a challenge made by Maynor Figueroa on Stephen Ireland last Saturday. The challenge left Ireland apparently needing between 12 and 15 stitches on his calf.

~ I recommend anyone reading this to Google it because it is a beaut of a cut. Not for the squeamish mind you ~

Steve Bruce apparently claimed that Ireland should have been sent off earlier in the game due to a bad tackle made on David Meyler. That in my opinion is a piss poor excuse from Bruce, that’s like Fergie defended Cantona when he lashed out at that supporter by saying “that fan should have gone home by then, that match was well boring.”

~ Side note: I’m assuming Alex Ferguson didn’t talk like that ~

A manager should normally stand by his players but it’s awful to think he could be condoning that kind of behavior. Fair enough if it was a bad tackle but this was one player going out of his way to hurt another player, to injure another player. Could easily end a lads career doing reckless sh*t like that…

I honestly can not believe that this has been talked about less than the tackle Ashley Barnes made on Matic. That tackle was a dive compared to what Figueroa did. But of course because it happened to a Chelsea player it is somehow more significant and more life threatening...I remember when Ashley Williams kicked a ball at Van Persie’s head...could have killed him that...not.

Nemanja Matic has a scuff mark on his shin pad and the whole world cries. Stephen Ireland has a make-shift vagina on his calf and the world say “Who?” “Didn’t he used to play for Man City?”. I’m a Wednesday fan so I know what it’s like being a less fashionable club, absolute joke that these kind of things just get looked over…

Another example is when Suarez bit Ivanovic, to be fair that one was one of the stupidest decisions made by a footballer in Premier League history, but I swear if he had bit Sebastien Bassong for Norwich, he’d have just had a one match ban to his name.

For me a bad tackle is a bad tackle but when people make out that a bad tackle is a horrific tackle that fans and pundits get no sense of perspective. When Eduardo broke his leg against Birmingham, that was horrific...when Ramsey broke his leg against Stoke it was so bad even Shawcross was crying as he left the pitch.

Now pundits are putting Ashley Barnes’ tackle up there with those...why? there was no broken bones, no injuries, there wasn’t even a yellow card for it. One of the reasons I skip the pundits analysis on Match of the Day. For me the people on there are the most f*cking clueless and contradicting people in football.

I wrote a post about Matic being a soft sod the other week and it seemed to get a lot of praise from a lot of football fans. How can so many football fans agree that it wasn’t that bad while the so called “experts” say it’s an abomination? For me it’s the press, the pundits and the players themselves that are making football a non-contact sport.

I’m glad that the FA had some sense about them not to punish Barnes but to let off Figueroa is just criminal. He could have done less damage with a knife. Imagine if he did that to Fabregas or Hazard...he’d have had a 10 match ban a £50,000 fine for both him and the club and every pundit calling for his head.

I hope the message you’ve gained from this is that perspective is needed for consistent punditry these days. And that concludes today’s lesson.

Homework/Trivia question for today - Only two players have scored more than 10 goals for Hull City in the Premier League. Who are they?

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Cheers for reading.