The Goon Blog

I’m back ladies and gentlefolk. There have been some cock-ups over the past few days with Aamir’s posts and I have been unable to correct anything because I’ve had no access. Apologies for that.

By the way, thanks Aamir for filling in over the past few days.

Now, onto the main story this week; we scored another three goals to secure our passage through to the Champions League group stages Eduardo has become somewhat of a hate figure in the press (see the headline) for diving to win a penalty. Here are a few brief-ish points.

• I’ll set my stall out straight away. He dived, its wrong and he deserved a yellow card for simulation under the UEFA rules.
• It was in a game where Arsenal were pretty much certain to go through.
• Its worth noting that Boruc grabbed hold of the ref… Thats a yellow card for starters, and one of him or Brown grabbed Eduardo round the neck. Thats a red card. So why are Celtic complaining?
• Would the press have reacted like this if Eduardo was English?

Most importantly, will UEFA use this law that any diving player receiving a two match ban be applied to these players?

Mutu
Gilardino
Drogba
Anelka
Shevchenko
J Cole
Kalou
Deco
Ballack
Lampard
A Cole
Belleti
Eboue
Torres
Riera
Babel
Benayoun
Kuyt
Gerrard
Lucas
Aurelio
Bridge
Wright Phillips
Adebayor
Robinho
Rooney
Berbatov
Owen
Anderson
Nani
Pato
Inzaghi
Zambrotta
Ronaldinho
Ambrosini
Pirlo
Borriello
Victor Valdes
Alves
Puyol
Ibrahimovic
Demichelis
Ribery
Robben
van Bommel
Klose
Schweinsteiger
Stankovic
Quaresma
Maicon
Materazzi
Mancini
Sneijder
Hulk
Meireles
Salihamidzic
Iaquinta
Del Piero
Amauri
Camoranesi
Giovinco
Sissoko
Diego
Kallstrom
Lopez
Govou
Cissokho
Pepe
Ramos
Raul
Kaka
Ronaldo
Diarra
Marcelo
Guti
van Nistelrooy
Higuain
van der Vaart
Adriano
Fabiano
Renato
Capel
Chevanton
Navas

Names taken from here, an article in the Online Gooner.

There is no doubt that this charge that Eduardo has been slapped with is media influenced. If there weren’t the headlines on the back pages of the Sun, Mirror and Daily Mail castigating our player he would not have been charged. It must be noted, the ban he will probably now received is only one game less than the one that befell Martin Taylor for smashing Eduardo’s leg into little tiny pieces. The club will rightly fight his corner but this looks set to run and run and run.

We can’t let this overshadow the importance of tomorrows game, one that I’m going to miss (annoyingly), and you can read about all the team news tomorrow morning in the usual blog.

All this talk of a two match ban for Eddie is fine as long as its backed up with bans for all the players above, and every diver in the future. Come on UEFA… you can’t always be morons.

Just to finish, Looven’s comments after the game were a disgrace and bordered on Xenophobic. His comments were along the line of “we tried to tell him he dived but he didn’t reply because he probably doesn’t even speak English”. THAT is what should have action taken against.

A dive = yellow card. He’s being vilified as if he is related to Bin Laden.

I’m slightly pissed off by all this. Like I said, if he was English, this wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t like Rangers or Celtic before the game this week but now I can safely say, I can’t stand Scottish football full stop.

More tomorrow.