Comment: Why Stoke and Arsenal can both learn from Aaron Ramsey's misfortune

01 March 2010

THE PAIN GAME . . . Arsenal and Stoke players show their horror as Aaron Ramsey’s leg is broken on Saturday

Comment by Paul Chronnell

THE morning after Eduardo had his leg broken at St Andrew's two years ago, Arsene Wenger unexpectedly found himself apologising.

Not to the maimed striker, or to his family but to Birmingham City's Martin Taylor, whose tackle had so horribly disfigured Eduardo's leg, and whom Wenger had called for to be 'banned from football for life' immediately after the game.

Regrettably, it seems Wenger has failed to heed the lessons from that unfortunate day in February 2008.

Understandable though it was for the Arsenal manager to let the emotion of the situation - and his concern for his young player - colour his judgment, his vilification of the perpetrator, this time Stoke City's Ryan Shawcross on Saturday, was both unedifying and unnecessary.

It is one thing to criticise the way Stoke play the game, but quite another to insinuate that Shawcross went into the tackle with the intention of inflicting such a horrendous injury. No footballer thinks like that, not Shawcross or Martin Taylor.

That is not to absolve Shawcross of any blame - the tackle was bordering on reckless, it has had terrible consequences, and the Stoke defender might want to consider how hard he throws his considerable frame into tackles in future.

However, he has probably made hundreds of tackles like it in his career, received the odd yellow card for some of them, and a huge surge of applause from supporters for others. Winning tackles is part of football, after all.

Stoke's style of play receives, and probably deserves, its fair amount of condemnation. They maximise their physical attributes, have a reliance on long-balls, long throw-ins and other questionable tactics and seem to enjoy making every home game a 'battle of Britannia'. Their volatile fans also play a part, and Tony Pulis is only too happy to go along with the siege mentality.

Teams like Fulham and Blackburn have felt the full force of that in recent games and have been floored without response. It is not just Arsenal who come in for this kind of rough treatment from Pulis's side.

However, it is Arsenal who seem to be picking up the nastiest injuries, three in four years now, at the grounds of teams who certainly like to play a physical game; Abou Diaby at Sunderland (then under Mick McCarthy), Alex McLeish's robust Birmingham side, and now Stoke.

Wenger's argument, that teams are targeting his side with the physical game and that these horrific injuries are a direct result of that tactic, is still wide of the mark though.

Yes, the more teams are sent out to 'get in Arsenal's faces' or 'rough them up', the more likely a late tackle is to occur, but Shawcross's challenge was an isolated incident in a game that Wenger admitted was 'committed but fair' up to that point.

Wenger likes to protect his players and so does every manager, including Pulis, who saw a clearly devastated Shawcross leave the field in tears.

Unlike at Birmingham in 2008, where there was a distinct lack of remorse from Birmingham players on the pitch, and very notably McLeish after the game, Stoke were genuinely repentant over the incident.

Was there a more moving sight during the entire episode than that of Glen Whelan tending to the stricken Ramsey seconds after the tackle? That kind of respect for a fellow professional is what is expected, and what was missing at St Andrew's.

Pulis followed suit in his post-match interviews, stating three or four times that he didn't 'care about the result, it is all about the young lad'.

And that of course, is what it is all about. Aaron Ramsey, just 19, is lying in a hospital bed this week, trying to recover from what is undoubtedly the biggest trauma of his young life, and facing a year-long battle to return to playing the game he loves.

Stoke and Shawcross can perhaps learn from this regrettable incident and so, too, can Arsenal and Wenger. Integrity can come in many guises, and Arsenal do not have a right to always occupy the moral high ground, even if it is Arsenal players who are, ultimately, the victims.

Wenger, widely and deservedly regarded as among the most intelligent and influential of managers, should have known better afterwards.

What he said was understandable but harmful, even if not intentionally so. A bit like the tackle itself then, really.