Football Food For Thought / Mike Norman / 28 September 2008 /

"Mystical" Mike Norman looks at the best and worst tacklers in the Premiership and the effect that changes in the laws of the game have had on a good old-fashioned bone crunching challenge.

During a game of football there is no finer sight than seeing a world class crunching tackle - the sort that gets the whole crowd on their feet shouting, "Go on, get in there ye (any expletive you like)".

Like peering through the oven window to see your Yorkshire puddings rise for the first time, a good tackle is one of those uplifting, "get in" moments. And within the Premiership we have some fantastic exponents of what is classed as a dying art.... mind, we have some dreadful ones also.

Yesterday's Premiership games had two perfect examples of what constitutes as a great tackle, though given that both led to goals for the opposition you might wonder why I'm using them as examples. However, it's the tackles that we are concentrating on and not the subsequent class of a striker or the ineptitude of one of England's 'top' referees.

Phil Jagielka's last ditch tackle on Dirk Kuyt in the Merseyside Derby was world class and nine times out of a ten would have prevented a goal. It was unfortunate for him that the ball ran loose to Fernando Torres who brilliantly dispatched the ball into the top corner, but the timing and execution of Jagielka's tackle whilst under extreme pressure in the penalty box was a perfect example of how it's done.

Jlloyd Samuel's tackle on Cristiano Ronaldo at Old Trafford wasn't bad either. This tackle wasn't a last ditch one however, it was calmness personified from the Bolton player as he bided his time before stretching out a leg to intercept the ball from the Portuguese superstar. Ronaldo was blameless in falling over (which isn't always the case) but for referee Rob Styles to award Manchester United a penalty was a complete howler on the Hampshire man's part.

Being a Middlesbrough fan you might expect me to be biased on these pages but I promise that's not the case when I name George Boateng as one of the best tacklers I've ever seen in the Premiership. Sit him in front of the back four and he will execute ball-winning tackles all day long. Unfortunately for George, he is also one of the worst passers of a football I've ever seen so all the good work was often undone.

Portsmouth's highly rated midfielder Lassana Diarra (pictured) is a player that rarely gives the ball away and can be relied upon to put in some excellent tackles throughout a game. It's no surprise to see him heading the Opta Sportsdata 'tackling' statistics with a 91% success rate, just ahead of Fulham's Danny Murphy (85%) and Bolton's Fabrice Muamba (83%).

Owen Hargreaves, Ledley King, Gareth Barry, Javier Mascherano, Kevin Nolan, Richard Dunne, Mikel Arteta and the afore mentioned Phil Jagielka are amongst the other names I would rate as being the best (and fairest) tacklers in the Premiership.

When you talk about someone who tackles poorly then you'll go a long way to find a better example than Paul Scholes, yet despite his inadequacies in this department he is still regarded as one of the finest midfielders in our game. He isn't malicious in any way (I don't think anyone is to be honest), he just makes rank bad tackles for whatever reason. Jon Mikel Obi, Lee Cattermole and Alan Smith are just a few other examples of players who haven't quite perfected the art of tackling.

Of course, changes to guidelines and instructions to referees down the years have made it more difficult for crunching tackles to go unpunished, despite the fact they can be successful ones.

Two-footed and dangerous tackles are usually met with a red card, and rightly so, but it's these new rules to the angle in which a tackle is made that I meet with disapproval. Is there any concrete proof that a tackle from behind is more dangerous than a tackle from the front or side? If a player wins the ball cleanly, then why should it matter at what angle he came in from? If you miss the ball and get the man you can hurt a player from any angle, just ask Eduardo. It seems extremely harsh that a player can track back, rap his foot around another player and win the ball cleanly - yet be punished because he came in 'from behind'.

I'm not of the opinion that less tackles are being made because of the new guidelines, I don't think that will ever change, but certainly referees have become less tolerant to bad tackles. This I'm all for, but referees have to understand that there is a major difference between a bad tackler (Scholes, Cattermole etc) and a bad tackle. Don't over punish the bad tacklers, but by all means stamp out (no pun intended) the bad tackles.

'.$sign_up['title'].'

'; } } ?>

:

:

:

?

: