Its not Delap's fault you can't defend his throw in's. Pulis is not arrogant or talentless, he's shown that by what he's done with the stoke team. They have scored goals this year without assistance from Delap.

Ugrhh an Arsenal fan from scotland ffs.

So using that logic, a tackle ought to be punished not according to its severity, or malicious intent, but only if it directly injures an opposing player. Carte blanche, then. Good idea.

And it seems to me the point was that, for all of Arsenal's complaints about unfair treatment, or 'victimisation', you're awfully quick to forget (or in this case, excuse) the fact that there are players in your own colours who are more than capable of acting like snide little fuckers when they walk onto a football pitch.

All that aside, it wasn't that long ago that your lot were the dirtiest team in the league. Were you complaining then?

No, not saying that at all. How often do you ever see one of these tackles where people say "Well he obviously meant it, the bloke is a dirty wanker"? Never really - maybe if it's Chris Morgan, who clearly is one. I'm not defending Gallas' tackle, it was poor and Arsene apologised for it. The only point I was making is that showing that tackle on Davies doesn't make the Ramsey incident alright, or the Eduardo one, or the Diaby one. And you can't say that Gallas's tackle above had "malicious intent" either. Toon's point that "no one gives a shit" implies that Arsenal are a dirty team, which I don't believe we are, and so in some way deserved it, which I think is unfair.

Every team has snidey sneaky moment, who is denying that? Rooney's never dived has he? Still a great player. Gerrard never flung himself about? Ho ho ho. But you know and I know that if the common currency of the league was "Man Utd don't like it up 'em" and you'd had three of these incidents in such a short space of time, you wouldn't be sitting there saying "Shit happens". You would think "This has possibly gotten a bit out of hand".

And yeah Super, back in the 90's I wrote letters to my MP to complain about it. Of course I didn't! But whlist I remember we got a lot of red cards in Wenger's early years, I can't recall anyone getting their leg snapped? That's not a snarky comment, I genuinely can't remember one, I'm sure someone can correct me though.

Will he be after he goes to Barca?

He doesn't compare with the legend that is Dennis Bergkamp though in my opinion.

Sorry to bring this up again but I thought this was a really good article.

Martin Samuel - Daily Mail, 02/03/2010
www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1254454/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Now-Aaron-Ramsey--broken-legs-chance.html

How can so many
broken legs be down to chance?

It was a familiar speech. ‘There is no way that was a malicious challenge,’ said David Kemp, assistant manager of Stoke City. ‘Ryan isn’t that sort of player. It was probably a new experience for him to get frustrated, that’s why he chased down the ball and made that tackle.

‘There was no malicious intent. It was a genuine attempt. We’ve seen far worse challenges go unpunished. It was just one of those football injuries, one of those incidents that frequently happen in the game. Before long Ryan might be on the end of one himself.’

Over time, only the names change. The quickest of wit will have spotted that Kemp is now Stoke’s chief scout, not assistant to Tony Pulis. His observation was not from Saturday, when Shawcross broke the leg of Aaron Ramsey, but from 2007 when he broke the leg of Francis Jeffers of Sheffield Wednesday with a tackle from behind. Maybe Arsene Wenger is correct not to believe in coincidence.

Shawcross left the Britannia Stadium distraught at this latest calamity. So he should be. Ramsey is a precociously-talented teenage footballer, and who knows when he will play again, or what path his career will now take?

These days, football gets its mitigations in early. It was the first time Shawcross has received a red card; he has subsequently and justifiably been called into the England squad and the majority agree there was no desire to harm in his challenge.

Yet malicious intent - the motivation to actually cause serious injury - is rare in football. One thinks of Roy Keane’s tackle on Alf Inge Haaland in the Manchester derby or the one by Gavin Maguire of Queens Park Rangers that ended the career of England full back Danny Thomas, and resulted in a compensation pay-out of £130,000.

Shawcross did not tackle Ramsey like that. He did however arrive late and with sufficient abandon to lose any chance of controlling the consequences. The greatest sickness in English football is that we do not recognise the wrong in that. ‘Spare me about how nice Shawcross is,’ Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said acidly; but the testimonials to his decency were already under construction.

And, despite his previous with Jeffers, Shawcross does not seem a wicked sort; yet neither was Martin Taylor of Birmingham City, the defender who shattered Eduardo’s leg almost two years ago to the day. So when Wenger dismisses the idea of coincidence in the number, and severity, of serious injuries Arsenal suffer during matches - three broken legs from foul tackles in five years - he has a point.

If his players were the victims of notorious hard men, Tommy Smith types who leave a string of wounded victims scattered in their wake throughout football, it might be coincidence. That two players with little reputation for brutality - certainly Taylor was a boy scout compared to most central defenders - end up making potentially career-ending tackles against players from the same club demands closer inspection.

Wenger believes players are told to get at Arsenal by roughing them up, and the evidence, while circumstantial, suggests he has a point. Shawcross did not seek to injure Ramsey but he will no doubt be aware of the theory that Arsenal don’t like it up them, and may have responded accordingly. Perhaps he heard it in the dressing room before the game.

Stoke City are not a dirty team and Pulis has done an exceptional job there, but is it beyond the realms of possibility that he employed one of football’s many euphemisms, prior to the game? Something about letting them know you are there, or seeing if they fancy it? What do these phrases mean if not ‘go in extra hard and test their courage’? And, at that point, are the margins between hard/fair and hard/dangerous not frighteningly small?

Pulis would never say ‘go out and break Ramsey’s leg’, and any coach who talks in those terms is despised by his contemporaries, but that does not mean Stoke’s management team did not place emphasis on the physical aspect of the game.

Let’s face it, no manager outside the top of the Premier League is going to attempt to win by out-passing Arsenal. Kevin Keegan, ever the optimist, tried it during his brief return to Newcastle United, lost heavily twice, and was mocked for his naivety.

Even Chelsea, who have beaten Arsenal 5-0 on aggregate in two matches this season, did so while making full use of their physical advantages. With players such as Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack and John Terry, they out-muscled Arsenal and, in doing so, out-played them, too. Wenger moaned after the game, but was dismissed. Chelsea were clearly superior and Arsenal could not compete with their athleticism, which then led to domination in technical areas. Yet, however baseless his complaints on those occasions, Wenger has the beginnings of an argument in the way Arsenal are regarded as a soft touch, and therefore fair game for bullies.
Ryan Shawcross

Crying shame: Shawcross leaves the field in tears after the challenge

Wenger feels that because English football believes Arsenal’s largely foreign squad is excessively fancy, this creates a climate which legitimises rough tactics as a way of beating them.

Chris Morgan, captain of Sheffield United, punched Robin van Persie, the Arsenal striker, in the ribs on the blind side during a match in 2006, but after the game there was greater focus on Van Persie’s refusal to offer his hand at the end.

As if an off-the-ball punch was something Arsenal’s softies just had to overcome, and they were bad sports if they could not. In essence, while English football employs this mindset, it is playing a version of the rules, not the real thing.

‘It wasn’t a bad tackle’ is the standard line, isn’t it? On the sofa, in the studio, in the press box, from the phone-ins. ‘It didn’t look that bad. There wasn’t much intent. He’s not that kind of player. He was just too quick for him. I thought the ref had a good game, actually. He let it flow.’ This last phrase - and we have all used it - translates as letting the players operate on the absolute boundaries of what is legal; a standing leg on this side of the divide, a raised foot on the other.

The reaction to the Shawcross and Taylor tackles is telling. Alan Hansen, Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker were stoic over what Shawcross had done, reviewing the footage on Match of the Day. Similarly, at the time of the Taylor tackle on Eduardo, Steve Bruce, a respected central defender, now manager of Sunderland and his former boss at Birmingham, did not even see the challenge as a yellow card.

From season to season, the justifications are unaltered. More than three decades’ experience in English football at least made Kemp smart enough to predict that the challenge on Jeffers was not the last leg-breaking tackle in which Shawcross would be involved. And he is one of the good guys, apparently.

There, in a nutshell, is the problem.

One thing I'll say on the matter, and without meaning to sound like a moany Arsenal fan, In terms of teams getting "stuck in" when playing us, it's obvious that you're going to get an increased risk of injurys like this.

On the Shawcross tackle, personally I think there was no real malice in it, a touch reckless but no intent of breaking Ramsey's Leg. I do however, think some teams can be overly physical when playing us and I know there's no laws saying otherwise, but again these sort of injuries are more likely to happen. Pretty much repeating some of what was said in the article but it hit home for me.

Yep, but there's a difference between "contact" and f*cking snapped legs and ankles. No need for the snide comment either is there? Good job you're a Newcastle fan or I'd have to take you seriously.

that was a good game but don't get carried away. arsenal were counter-attacking excellence but porto fell apart like a house of cards at the first sign of pressure. remind you of anyone?

Another good result, and another case of 'let's not get carried away' - Vermaelen is banned, so in steps Silvestre... gulp.

Don't count on it. The FA make up the rules as they go along.

If you've got a problem with that, go and screw yourself.