The outpouring of sympathy for Shawcross in the media today is absolutely vile and sickening. The usual excuses are being trotted out, and forgotten in all of it is the victim of the crime —yes is a crime, if it was off the field, Shawcross would be charged for GBH— is all but forgotten.
The general feeling on Ramsey in the media is that he is young and will be back, how the hell to they know that? We all wish Ramsey well, but there is the possibility that he’s career is over. So to say he’s young and he’ll be back is irresponsible.
Just as irresponsible as ignoring the culture of “getting stuck in” against Arsenal because “they don’t like it”. Yesterday I posted this in twitter “Should motorists who cause accidents due to careless or dangerous driving be let off because they didn’t mean it?”. If you go around driving carelessly one day you will have an accident, even if “you didn’t mean it”.
They just don’t get it. The point is this, if you repeatedly go into tackles with excessive force in a bid to intimidate your opponent, sooner or later something like this will happen. And for those of you who say he not “that type of player” maybe we should ask Fancis Jeffers who had his ankle seriously injured by Shawcross, or Adebayor who was hacked from behind outside the field of play by Shawcross, or Fabregas who had his leg raked by a stud up challenge from Shawcross… no he’s not “that type of player”
Some people even have the gall to say that a card was not deserved, I tell you if I could afford it I’d smash my TV on numerous occasions. Some of the TV and Radio pundits really do my head in. It’s as if the deliberately make these statements to wind people up —they wouldn’t, would they? The laws of football says that it is a red card for excessive force something that most pundits either don’t know or conveniently forget in their zeal to extol the virtues of English grit and determination.
This whole episode had made me realise that no amount of complaints from the Arsenal side of the fence will change anything, a culture of using the application brute force to counteract skill and technique cannot be so easily forsaken. Maybe the result yesterday may go some way to expunge the notion that we can’t handle ourselves, for as far as I saw we dealt pretty well with what Stoke had to offer and we were able to impose ourselves having Stoke to chase shadows.
The huddle at the end of the game probably meant more than a team huddle has ever meant before, this was an expression of defiance, a show of belief. Wenger has been ridiculed for his conviction in the mental strength of his team, yesterday showed if anything else that this is not the team that crumbled under the same circumstances 2 years ago.
If ever we needed an “us against the world” mentality this is it. What I saw yesterday was a team ready to go the distance, able to put tragedy and disappointment behind them and keep their eyes on the goal, no Arsenal fan would be surprised if we did go on to lift the trophy this season.
let’s win the league for Aaron
