Look up the word ‘tackling’ in the dictionary in relation to football and it is described as, ‘a physical challenge to an opponent, as to prevent his progress with the ball’.
The fast and physical nature of the English game is underpinned by tackling. But these days the hard tackling footballer I watched as a kid in the 1970’s, is slowly being irradiated all together – and that’s a real shame.
In the modern game, a crunching tackle is now that risky that it’s likely to get a player booked or even sent off as with Karl Henry on Saturday.
You can understand the calculations whizzing through referee André Marriner as the Wolves captain slid in on Tomas Rosicky.
In those couple of seconds it took for André to send off Karl for the first time in his career, he would have had over 55,000 Arsenal fans baying for blood, grumpy Wenger give him daggers from the touchline and the memories of Ramsey and Eduardo fresh in his thoughts.
With the benefit of television replays from myriad angles, we could all see that Karl won the ball but it was perhaps a bit rash and therefore in the modern game a yellow card would have been suffice.
I think Mariner did the maths and took the easy route by brandishing that ridiculous red card. That way he would probably appease his bosses at the FA and be safe from Arsène Wenger’s Gaelic anger.
Anyway, there were plenty of positives to take from the game, including best performances of the season for Mancienne and Hahnemann.
Wolves are fast becoming the hardest working team in the Premiership and if they keep this level up over the last five games we will have nothing to worry about.
@Wolvesblogger 