Flog - Karl Henry: gymnastics fan or simply very stupid.

And so it rumbles on. Every Monday morning, particularly this season it seems, another report of a player knee-deep in plaster cast after having their fibulas and tibias and bujibulas snapped by an over-zealous opposition.
This week it is Hatem Ben-Arfa laying in hospital after Nigel de Jong’s lunge left him sprawled out after only a few minutes of the game gone. Needless to say the Frenchman was probably singled out as Newcastle’s danger man and de Jong made his presence felt early with, in truth, a fair tackle, but completed with a devastating follow through.
The weekend could have been even worse had Jordi Gomez solidly planted his left leg in the turf instead of managing to somersault Karl Henry’s challenge at the DW Stadium the previous day. Henry’s immediate reaction to being sent-off was that of shock, either that or he’s an avid gymnastics fan and was disappointed Gomez failed to stick the landing, but has since accepted the punishment was justice for a disgusting tackle.
Reputations go before players in football. Wolves, Henry in particular, have been criticised this season for being over physical and masters of the dark arts. Whereas Henry’s leg-breaking tackle on Bobby Zamora was rightly deemed fair challenge yet a horrific accident, his treatment of Joey Barton weeks earlier could have easily done the same damage.
As for de Jong, it’s only been a matter of months since the World Cup Final in which he attempted to pierce Xabi Alonso’s nipple in with his boot. He is known as a reducer, a man prepared to not only do the donkey work but throw himself about the place while doing it. He’s not exactly the smallest of blokes, either.
I was at White Hart Lane when Wolves eventually went down 3-1 and it was evident that as a team they try and play football. They do the defensive necessaries in the process; Spurs had at least three creative players who needed to be closed down quickly otherwise they could have run riot. But they were far from dirty.
Look at this way: had Paul Scholes made either of those tackles, it is unlikely he would have seen red. It is often received comically that Scholes can’t tackle- I mean literally cannot tackle, he’s utterly useless- but it seems to be passed over. The argument can be invalidated by saying a man of his experience wouldn’t have made such an impossibly mistimed challenge in the first place, but he’s been there before. I seem to remember the bullet-like hole he left in a Swedish player’s leg when playing for England years ago.
I like a forceful game. If we take the two ends of the Premiership spectrum- Wenger to Allardyce- I would say, predictably, I lie somewhere in the middle. I was a massive defender of Ryan Shawcross when he buckled Aaron Ramsey’s leg last season because I firmly believe he would not have made that tackle if he’d have known just how much force he would produce on another footballer’s shin. Henry and de Jong just seemed to want to make their presence felt in a game where hard tacklers are fast losing a lot of ground in the debate.
Wenger does himself no favours when asking for lengthy bans for players who see red for bad challenges on his players, especially as he has seen (term used loosely) some of the worst from his own team over the years, and if you look at the teams who have got results against Arsenal in recent years they have all had an element of fierceness in their play. They come off with a scoreline in their head, not a body count.
Listen to the YouTube community, and they call for ‘permabans’. Listen to those who know and they’ll tell you quite simply that people like Karl Henry are just very stupid.