Dave Kidd: Ilkay Gundogan’s injury was bad, but there was no need for Manchester City players’ shirt tribute
Sunsport's Chief Sports Writer Dave Kidd gives his reaction to the weekend's big talking points including Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Jamie Vardy's red card
PERHAPS it was the Yaya Toure birthday cake affair which frightened Manchester City into doing it.
The brainstorm which caused every City player to walk out for Sunday’s Premier League showdown with Arsenal, wearing back-to-front shirts bearing Ilkay Gundogan’s surname and squad number.
But it turned out to be the moment when football’s deep-rooted empty-gesture culture finally ‘jumped the shark’ and went too far.
While Twitter is rightly blamed for many ills, Twitter did its job on Sunday when it heaped merciless ridicule on this nonsense.
Gundogan has a knee injury bad enough to sideline him for the season. But, it was pointed out, this was no cause for black armbands or bouquets on central reservations.
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And fair play to the Gun Dog himself, who joined in with the mirth and merriment by confirming he was not actually dead.
It was all a bit of fun, in the end. Although City ought to be grateful that they won with the degree of manliness apparently needed to stage a comeback. Otherwise the sewage storm would have been relentless.
The team who don’t do tackling but do do Diana-grade mourning for a bloke with dodgy biscuits.
It might have finished off old Pep as he struggles to adapt to life in the Premier League’s anger factory.
But the point remains that football is a contact sport, in which footballers will always get injured.
And, as with Gundogan, the serious injuries are very rarely caused by bad tackles.
Gundogan was injured in an accidental collision with Watford’s Nordin Amrabat. The sort of incident for which the word ‘innocuous’ was invented and is only ever used to describe.
The German wasn’t injured by a two-footed tackle. Especially not a two-footed tackle which won the ball and had little impact on an opposing player. And certainly not a two-footed tackle in which the second foot wasn’t actually doing anything.
In short, it was not caused by the sort of tackle which got Jamie Vardy sent off during Leicester’s visit to Stoke. Stoke of all places.
These tackles are what TV pundits seem contractually obliged to refer to as ‘potential leg-breakers’. Even though they virtually never break legs nor cause any sort of injury.
Ryan Shawcross’s tackle on Aaron Ramsey was almost seven years ago and there have been few leg-breakers in the frenetic Premier League since then.
Vardy’s challenge was excellent. It wasn’t even a foul. It would have won back possession for Leicester, had referee Craig Pawson not blown up and shown him a red card. And yet it was easy to understand why Pawson made the decision.
The laws of football make no reference to two-footed tackles or feet off the ground. They state: ‘A tackle or challenge that endangers the safety of an opponent or uses excessive force or brutality must be sanctioned as serious foul play’ - and therefore a red card.
But the law is clearly a woolly ass here. Any challenge can endanger an opponent’s safety, including Amrabat’s innocent tangle with Gundogan.
And a directive from Premier League refereeing chief Mike Riley in 2012 stated that all two-footed tackles were to be deemed dangerous. Why? Even ones where the ball is won, the opponent is unscathed and the second foot is simply too close to the first foot?
Of the ex-refs in the media, some claim Pawson was right, some say he was wrong – another reason why technology in decision-making is going to be such a time-consuming pain in the testes.
Poor old Pawson might have sent off Marcos Rojo at Crystal Palace on Wednesday for a worse tackle than Vardy’s. On Saturday, his head was probably scrambled by the furore over Rojo, as he operates in a game so desperate to sanitise itself that it has lost all sense or reason.
No manager is more respectful of referees than Claudio Ranieri and yet the Leicester boss went stark raving bonkers over Vardy’s dismissal.
He knows it was the sort of challenge any manager would appreciate, the sort Claudio Gentile built a legend on back in Ranieri’s homeland.
But football doesn’t want legends like Gentile any more. It wants to wrap up its players in so much cotton wool that they’ll need to re-open the mills of Manchester.
And if the poor lambs still get hurt, it wants to stand as one and grieve in unison – with even the over-sized prosthetic heads of the cartoon mascots bowed in sombre silence.
It wants empty gestures, not logic or perspective.
ALEXIS SANCHEZ and Mesut Ozil’s agents have forged a seemingly unbreakable alliance against the Arsenal management as they adopt a collective bargaining approach in their epic contract saga.
But Sunday’s defeat at Manchester City suggested Sanchez’s ‘people’ might be doing their man a disservice. While the Chilean is indispensable to Arsene Wenger, Ozil is not.
For all his majesty, the German goes missing too often.
Whatever’s in the pot for the pair of them, Sanchez is worth more than 50 per cent.
Gareth's club call
MAYBE it’s not quite the impossible job for Gareth Southgate, after all.
For all the (understandable) concerns about English players struggling to get game time at clubs, there are currently a full eleven of England internationals in form which you’d describe as either good or excellent - Hart; Walker, Jones, Cahill, Rose; Carrick, Henderson; Walcott, Lallana, Sterling; Defoe.
Not too shabby.
Zlat Can lead way
BENEATH all the Cantona-esque showmanship and the hammed-up arrogance, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is, at heart, a very good old-fashioned English-style centre forward.
So while Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal often decide they can do without a non-false flesh-and-blood No 9, the Swede’s class and stamina suggest Manchester United can make the top four after all.
Man of the Year
IN N’Golo Kante’s last 38 Premier League games for Chelsea and Leicester, the equivalent of an entire season, his record has been W28 D7 L3 P91.
That points total has been bettered by the actual Premier League champions only once in the 21 seasons since it became a 20-team competition.
Forget Donald Trump, Kante ought to have been Time magazine’s Man of the Year.
Zola power
IT goes without saying that Gary Rowett’s sacking by Birmingham City was grossly unfair and looked ridiculous.
Yet the same was true of Nigel Adkins being axed in favour of Mauricio Pochettino at Southampton and of the last two Watford managers, Slavisa Jokanovic and Quique Sanchez Flores, being ditched after considerable successes. None of those turned out badly.
A devil’s advocate might suggest that Gianfranco Zola’s managerial record is patchy rather than disastrous. That the Italian had a good season at West Ham and a good season at Watford. And that with Birmingham now looking to spend, he might attract players of a quality Rowett might not have managed.
Pep and Seluk reunion
YAYA TOURE has started four games since being granted a Manchester City comeback and City have won all four.
Of the last five matches Toure has not started, City have won none.
The 33-year-old is out of contract in the summer, so it looks like negotiations must start on a new deal.
Ah the season of goodwill to all men. Even for Pep Guardiola and Dimitri Seluk.