Institutionalised bullying

[Cappy]

Dunno... that challenge yesterday deserved a booing regardless of who dished it out.

Ouch.

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Yeah if he was only booed at those points and not from when his name is first read out on the tannoy to the moment he is subbed.

 

[Tarqs]

Here's some institutional bullying:

Notice that prat Milovojevic is in every one of them.

 

[norfolkblade]

Dunno... that challenge yesterday deserved a booing regardless of who dished it out.

Ouch.

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But it's ok and not a red card as he's "not that type of player".

Imagine someone putting one of those on Sterling and not getting a red, you'd never hear the end of it!

 

[dingledog]

For God's sake

 

[Bladesman]

But it's ok and not a red card as he's "not that type of player".

Imagine someone putting one of those on Sterling and not getting a red, you'd never hear the end of it!

Sterling could have easily been sent off.

Also, Sterling was getting booed from the off yesterday due to Spurs previous encounters with City.

 

[Houston_Blade]

I just clicked on the tweet and looked at some of the replies and then realised why I don't use twitter.

 

[norfolkblade]

Sterling could have easily been sent off.

Also, Sterling was getting booed from the off yesterday due to Spurs previous encounters with City.

He should've gone for me, at full speed it looked pretty nasty let alone when it was slowed down.

Hasn't it always been the case though that the oppo's best players gets booed? I don't see the issue myself.

 

[Bladesman]

I just clicked on the tweet and looked at some of the replies and then realised why I don't use twitter.

I have very good self control when I view Twitter. I am able to have an account, read shit like that and not respond.

 

[Houston_Blade]

I have very good self control when I view Twitter. I am able to have an account, read shit like that and not respond.

I suppose there's an element of trying to educate the uneducable so it would be a waste of time. I just think that in these situations you've got a journalist trying to stir things up, Blades responding will be 'uncouth savages from the North' and the Palace fans will just nod along and say how dirty we are. It's lose:lose for us.

 

[Paisley Blade]

Is Wilf the zone man ?

 

[BladeInIreland]

It's a part of the game I actually enjoy. It is a skill in itself and has always been the case. These teams want their stars to have a free run at it and score for fun. Some clubs oddly enough are happy to roll over in the name of playing nice football. It's about winning and we are willing to do both.

It's down to the ref to protect players where needed. It's down to us to judge where that line is.

 

[Bladesman]

I suppose there's an element of trying to educate the uneducable so it would be a waste of time. I just think that in these situations you've got a journalist trying to stir things up, Blades responding will be 'uncouth savages from the North' and the Palace fans will just nod along and say how dirty we are. It's lose:lose for us.

Also on Twitter very rarely does anyone back down and change their view. So you are correct it is a lose-lose situation, everyone just wants their say.

 

[Greasy Chap Butty]

Here's some institutional bullying:

Anybody coming up to me like that (if I were a ref) would be getting a red. If somebody did that in the street to you, different story again.................

 

[Rochdaleblade]

Zaha features in the top three players drawing yellow cards. Unsurprisingly Grealish is up there as well. They both seem to have perfected running into the opponent and jumping up as if they have trodden on a land mine. Would love to see someone snap the cheating cunt in two.

 

[Greasy Chap Butty]

What against this angel?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/b2eac419-78bd-4bb6-9908-abc69a2cb45a

 

[Yellarbellyblade]

For God's sake

WTF????

 

[Houston_Blade]

Also on Twitter very rarely does anyone back down and change their view. So you are correct it is a lose-lose situation, everyone just wants their say.

It's like certain posters on here then

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

Rotational fouling must be stopped now – it’s institutionalised bullying

I am not sure which of the various epithets most adequately captures the phenomenon. Rotational fouling, perhaps? Take-it-in-turns fouling? Gyratory fouling? Whatever we call it, one thing is clear: football has to get on top of this scourge.

Wilfried Zaha has particular reason to have a gripe about this depressing problem. In Crystal Palace’s game against Sheffield United on Saturday, it was like that scene out of Airplane where the stewards line up one by one to give the panicking passenger a good, hard slap.

Sander Berge was the first to step on to the carousel, fouling Zaha in the third minute. A little later, George Baldock stepped up to the plate, fouling Zaha once more. He did so again in the 18th minute (pulling Zaha back, for which he received a yellow card) and in the 34th minute, with studs planted on his foot. By now you would have hoped that Andrew Madley, the referee, was cottoning on to Baldock’s serial offending, so United rotated.

A little before half-time, Chris Basham fouled Zaha, then in the 68th minute it was John Fleck, then in the 77th minute John Egan and in the 90th John Lundstram. The only surprise is that Zaha didn’t get a boot to the ankle from Chris Wilder, the United manager, as well as his kit man and assistant physio as he walked off at full time. Wasn’t that in the game plan too?

Some will say that it has always been thus. I remember a wizened Manchester United fan telling me that he had watched a game where George Best was fouled by all ten opposition outfield players over the course of 90 minutes, a doubtless apocryphal tale but one that captures something about the heritage of rotational fouling. It certainly isn’t a modern contrivance.

The difference today, though, is the level of premeditation, the way it is orchestrated with such Machiavellian precision. Troy Deeney, the Watford striker, let the cat out of the bag, perhaps unintentionally, when he said: “You take it in turns kicking Zaha. I know no one wants to hear that, but you go, ‘You hit this time, you hit him the next time.’ You don’t have the same player tackle him because you know you’re going to get booked.”

This interview, incidentally, was given in 2018 and barely raised a whimper, perhaps the most eloquent indication of how deeply rotational fouling has become entrenched within modern football. The pundits call it “professional”. They call it “clever”. It is, to my mind, none of these things. A more adequate term is cheating.

Zaha, for his part, is seething. It is clear that these tactics are not merely influencing the outcome of games, but endangering his physical longevity as a player. “I know that for a fact [opponents are out there to hurt me] but I just don’t know what to do any more,” Zaha said after a game last season. “I end up arguing with referees because today the guy studded me in my shin — do they need to break my leg before anyone gets a red card?”

I know that Zaha isn’t perfect, and his tendency to whine at referees has been widely condemned, but can you really blame him? It is like the victim of a weekly burglary complaining to an apathetic police force. On the past five occasions that a player has been fouled at least eight times in a single Premier League game, Zaha has been on the receiving end three times. These included matches against Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United; on the latter occasion, he was fouled an extraordinary ten times.

This is why it is surely time for a new directive, providing referees with the retributive tools to get on top of this menace. Take Crystal Palace’s game against Watford in December, where players kicked Zaha for 90 minutes, a clear and obvious attempt to neutralise a talented player, but where the challenges were deployed outside the box (to avoid conceding a penalty) and where the rotational logic ensured that no single player risked a sending-off.

The solution isn’t difficult to glimpse. At present, an offender can be given a yellow card for cumulative fouling. That’s to say, there is a well-established norm that if a player commits three fouls, each one of which is below the threshold for a yellow, the aggregate effect can be sufficient for a caution to be given anyway. You often see referees pointing to the different places on the pitch that these cumulative offences were enacted as they brandish the card.

Isn’t it time to extend this logic to victims, too? The moment a single player is fouled twice in a game, the referee should significantly lower the threshold for subsequent fouls on that specific player. That would ensure that the next time an opposition player tried to bring him down, they would receive a yellow card, with the next offender receiving a red. This would end, or at least mitigate, individuals being repeatedly fouled throughout a game.

This isn’t just about Zaha, of course, but the many others who have been victimised, such as Adama Traoré, of Wolverhampton Wanderers, who was hacked down by three different Tottenham players over 15 second-half minutes in a Premier League match in December. Three yellow cards were shown for these offences (no red card, of course) and Spurs went on to win 2-1. The previous week, Brighton & Hove Albion offered the same “tactic”, with three different players booked for fouls on Traoré.

I could go on. For the point is that this form of institutionalised bullying has become endemic in the game, rarely commented upon, let alone condemned. This is not just an indictment of football, but its docile administrators. It is time for rotational fouling to end, once and for all.

That's a great suggestion that if a player is fouled twice the threshold for a foul on them and a card should be lowered. The likes of Grealish and Maddison would never be off the floor.

 

[Selly]

I probably shouldn't have been, but I was really surprised just how reliant they were on Zaha to do something. At half-time, 71% of their attacks had come down his side. 71%! Even at full-time, after he'd switched wings for a lot of the second half, it was still heavily weighted to the left:

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Compare that to the first meeting between us this season, they were much more balanced (although it looks like they were more 4-4-2 in that one than 4-3-3)

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I like Hodgson but they're as close to a one-man team as anything I've seen. There's "playing to your strengths" (and the rest of their team is incredibly prosaic) and then just doing the bleeding obvious every single time you have the ball.

I was astonished that they put him on their right (our left) in the second half.

With Baldock on a booking, and given the last 10 mins before half time, it looked like only a matter of time before either Baldock got a second yellow, or failed to challenge allowing Zaha to create something.

I thought they really missed a trick there - bizarre tactics.

 

[ucandomagic]

Dunno... that challenge yesterday deserved a booing regardless of who dished it out.

Ouch.

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If one of our lot had done that you can guarantee that VAR would have given them red. Then they ignore a blatant dive to try to get a second pen. If there was no contact, as there was no pen, there was nothing else to make him go down other than cheating. That’s why, like Zaha, he gets booed.

 

['Doc' Pace my hero]

Unfortunately for Crystal Palace they are a 'one trick pony',stop Zaha,stop their threat.If Zaha was fouled 8 times out of a total of 15 then it simply shows how vulnerable they are when they play a very astute,accomplished premier league opponent.If they don't address this and develop a plan 'B' they will be relegated next season,they are too predictable to be successful in the premier league.

 

[LoughboroBlade]

“Chris, Mike McCarthy from BBC Radio Sheffield. You’ve been accused by some sections of the media of contributing to institutionalised bullying by deliberately targeting players with rotational fouling – your thoughts?”

 

[Alf Tuppers Shorts]

I don’t use Twitter, can somebody start a thread about institutionalised diving.......

Worst part of the premier league this divine lark.

4. Hodgson's only attacking tactic is "Pass it to Zaha and hope he does something magic"

Halfway right. Pass to Wilf he will dive then send big lads forward.
Same tactics that Bruce Boy adopted for the Pigs. Pass to Forest fairy? he dives , get Barry Minnie to try and pop one in

 

[ATL Recs]

Zaha is their biggest threat. So tackles will be made on him.

Billy gets fouled all the time and rarely gets given free kicks.

Fucking bullying I tell thee!!!!

Lets be reight -Billy get his fare share of free kicks in his favour -

 

[Blade56]

That wants adding to his Twitter feed

i can’t use twitter

Excellent B56, hope you don't mind me tweeting it to that Syed twat.

no issue twatter away

Here's some institutional bullying:

Twitter these pics as well.

 

[ATL Recs]

“Why are all the players kicking Wilf”

Lying toe rag, bet she didn’t even know which player Wilf was if it’s her first game let alone what is a foul.

Add it to tipping up wheelchairs and kidney punching.

Next we‘ll be accused of startling Liverpool supporters and making them run towards Juv supporters int Heysel stadium.

Wouldnt have happened would it if Baldock had been sent off around minute 30 (he got away with one big time )

 

[Tynemouth Blade]

For God's sake

What a load of bollocks!

 

[Kev Gee]

If you don't want to watch contact sports then go and watch basketball or something instead.

 

[Bladesman]

It's like certain posters on here then

Twitter is the perfect place for WWF.

 

[Bladesman]

Lets be reight -Billy get his fare share of free kicks in his favour -

Only when he has been raped by the defender.