Post by Gavin Tagg on the Facebook Arsenal Forum

Taylor's previous good record as a player, and the fact that it was Eduardo (as opposed to Rooney, Gerrard or Owen) who was the victim, seems to have completely blinded many people to a couple of realities. Namely:

Teams are definitely instructed by their managers that Arsenal don't like it up 'em, so go in early and go in hard lads - the ref will always let you off in the first 10 minutes with a warning before brandishing yellow cards. As a result of this thuggish tactical outlook, Eduardo might never play again. The hell with ifs and buts.

There is no plea in mitigation possible or necessary when you get a tackle like this. Saying that a player is too dopey to be fooled by a bit of speed (what, is Eduardo suddenly Superman, faster than a speeding bullet?) makes an absolute nonsense of what happened. Ditto the fact that Eduardo's studs happened to be firsnly in the turf at the time of impact. You can't blame a player for being nippy or for planting his foot when he runs. What you can blame is the carelessless and needlessness of a tackle which may well have snuffed out one of the most promising lights of the Premiership. As a Premiership player, Taylor knows that it his his duty to pull out of tackles that are shin-high that might possible end up causing serious injury; you have to be professioanl enough to realise that, at this level, pace of your opponent is a very real possibility. "Dangerous" is just as bad as "malicious". I don't think Taylor needs nor wants a hiding place - he has to live with this now, and the stigma attached to him is considerable.

The result? Racism is definitely alive and well in football. If it had been a Croatian centre back snapping Rooney's leg in half, regardless of whether such Croatian had a previously good disciplinary record and expressed immediate remorse and contrition afterwards, the whole country would be up in arms, the papers would be showing a picture of the Croatian centre back on the back pages with a bulls-eye on his forehead and publishing his mobile number for people to leave hate messages, and so on. The player would be booed with his every touch in every match thereafter, have coins flung at him from the terraces at every away game, and eventually hounded out of the Premiership.

As it is, we have a good old honest English centre back with a good old honest English name, clumsy but well-meaning - snapping the first-choice Croatian striker's leg in half. Hey, let's not get all angry, say the papers - there was no malice, clearly, it was careless not intentional. Not his fault if this nippy johnny foreigner fooled him, eh? Someone buy him a pint and tell him not to be too upset, these things happen in football.

Wenger deserves a lot of credit. He was quite rightly livid at what happened - time and time again, he has said that teams are told to go in hard on his players, and it is only a matter of time before disaster happens - lo and behold, it has happened - why shouldn't he be furious? What is he, some sort of robot that is expected to process every piece of information before engaging with the media? His comments about Taylor being banned for life were wrong, and once he had calmed down he had the good grace to say exactly that. Showing that not only does he have passion and emotion, he also has those rare gifts of humility and self-analysis - things that SAF does not exactly have in spades.

I am getting seriously annoyed with all those short-sighted tossers out there who latched onto what Gallas did at the end of the match and use this as an excuse to pontificate about how petulance should not be part of a captain's make-up. It started with Richard Keys on Sky - however, in football terms he is a buffoon whose football 'education' was learnt opposite Anne Diamond on TV-AM. To see some so-called respectable football journalists not see the bigger picture is truly amazing. Do any of them actually think that Gallas' sit-in was solely because we just dropped 2 points due to a penalty that shouldn't have been awarded? Have we ever seen Gallas do that before? Or did something happen in the previous 90 mins that might just have made a win extremely, and emotionally important for Gallas and his team mates? Like, for example, winning the match for the honour of their stricken team mate? Did the fact that tears were running down his cheeks not give any of you supposedly clever football writers any clue of what was happening? He's not a robot either. I would only have been anoyed with him if he has broken his foot on those advertising hoardings. Get out of your ivory towers, you numpties, and see the bigger picture - that's what the national papers pay you to do.


Eduardo Da Silva Broken Leg - A funny movie is a click away

P.S for link to that Arsenal Forum on Facebook, here it is : http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=5002201993957&topic=692. And you have to add that application to view it.

And to all those motherfucking cunts who think that Martin Taylor is innocent, go fuck yourself. Watch the video and go fuck yourself again.