14 Sep 2021 04:17:13
The Elliot injury goes a long way to collaborate Klopp's worry about the FA allowin more physicality this season.
Personally i find the decision to allow more physicality to be the right one, especially with current footballers tendencity to fall at the slightest touch, but one can't help but wonder really, anyways that's why there are medical staff on standby.
P. S. Kudos to the medical staff, the jumped right in, not waiting for the Ref or nothing. Immediately they saw Salah's gestures the jumped in like one of those wrestling Refs when there is a pin down - kudos again.


1.) 14 Sep 2021
14 Sep 2021 05:34:18
😀😀 Thank you.


2.) 14 Sep 2021
14 Sep 2021 06:09:37
Truth is if this freak injury had happened to any of the other 19 teams players then we probably wouldn’t even bat an eyelid or mention physicality in the league. Football is a contact sport and so far there’s been 40 games played and this 1 bad injury. I’d be concerned if this was happening every couple of games but it’s not.


3.) 14 Sep 2021
14 Sep 2021 07:40:59
No matter what you do, football is a contact sport and accidents always have and always will happen. The downside of trying to restrict contact is ‘diving’. The downside of allowing latitude in contact is ‘going ver the ball’ passing unpunished.

I’d agree with JK, the bad injury was a complete accident but it comes at a sensitive time and will be ‘used in evidence’ for the too much physicality point of view.

If you roll back the clock 12 months we had the. VVD / Pickford affair. A seasoned n ending injury at a time of strict rules about contact.

If people want to deliberately injure someone then the rules are not a barrier but, fortunately since the 70’s the genuine cloggers seem to have, happily, disappeared into the history of the game.


4.) 14 Sep 2021
14 Sep 2021 09:46:22
Generally speaking I also favour the apparent move this season to allow more tackles and physical contact to go, but I think where we've all grown so tired of the constant "fouls" and free-kicks is when you see the very slight contact that wouldn't even knock a toddler over but the player throws themselves to the floor and wins a free-kick. I can't remember who it was against but there was an incident when Fernandes wanted a free-kick when he was dispossessed before Utd's opponents scored in a match earlier this season. So that's a positive development as far as I'm concerned.

However, the tackle from behind is, in my opinion, a completely different situation and was clamped down on some years ago for very good reason. When a player tackles from behind, it's pretty much impossible to play the ball without first taking the players legs from underneath them. The worst of the old fashioned tackles from behind were when a ball was played into a striker's feet and the centre half would just go to ground and clatter in from behind, but even a tackle from behind by a player chasing an opponent who is running away from them (like the Elliott incident) is still going to result in the tackler having to go through the opponents legs to get to the ball (unless they execute one of those brilliant tackles where the slide is more from the side and hooks the ball first, with the opponent then falling over afterwards) . In the vast majority of cases, there will be no problem or no injury but the point is that the tackler has no control or no way of knowing exactly how the opponent is going to fall and land. If you just slide through somebodies legs as they are running, you simply can't control what happens next so almost by definition, it's out of control and opens up the, albeit slim, possibility of something happening like we saw with Elliott.

On a related note and just for a bit of "it was better in the old days" fun, I saw a clip the other day from a Wimbledon v Utd match in the 90s. There was one incredible passage of play that started with John Fashanu going in full-on two footed knee-high. There was then a bit of a battle for the ball that ended up with Vinnie Jones on the floor and then launching himself from the floor into a kind of flying head-butt towards Roy Keane's midriff. The ball then went out of play and the ref just gave a throw in!


5.) 14 Sep 2021
14 Sep 2021 10:26:03
Another one here who agrees with JK and WDW, and a great point about VVD's injury last season during the more stringent rules on contact.

I think that we (as a fan group) are collectively in danger of over-reacting. It was no where near the most vicious of challenges even from this weekend, nevermind this season.

It's just really, really bad luck that the result of the challenge was so horrible.

Fingers crossed he's back training soon - I honestly believe that if he had just got up, it wouldn't have been a sending off or maybe even not a booking.


6.) 14 Sep 2021
14 Sep 2021 13:09:07
So we're just going to ignore the fact that yet again the Fa have changed the law for no other reason than to avoid facing the truth that their refs are incompetent - this time by just rubber stamping any marginal call as one they just say no to?


7.) 14 Sep 2021
14 Sep 2021 17:02:48
OP, not sure the new directive contributed to this injury. It was a freak accident that is unfortunate under the circumstances. I mean, the very same thing happened to Mane and no one said a word cos Mane was lucky enuff to not have his standing foot on the turf. It happens. I don't think we should start overreacting over it and linking it with the new directives cos to me, they are not related.