Pardew: “Tioté can’t change his game”
Posted on April 22nd, 2011 | 80 Comments |
In all seriousness, Alan Pardew is a man who has a thought and believes it must be shared and heard by anybody with ears. Sadly, in the blogging business and as fans of Newcastle United, that more than often means us.
After his public warning of Cheik Tioté earlier in the week, he has come out today and seemingly took back those statements, or at least the negative connotations.
Pardew is, of course, simply a man who speaks his mind and as we’ve seen so many times before, that can be misconstrued. I don’t believe that Pardew set out with the specific intention of criticising Cheik Tioté as much as I believe that Mike Ashley refused a pie in the hospitality area. He was simply answering a question in the way that felt most natural to him.
In an event that can only be equated to hell freezing over, Alan Pardew pushed his reclusive streak aside and spoke to the press:
“He can’t change his game. He’s a fully committed midfielder into the challenges. He’s going to get bookings but there are one or two he’s taken that are unnecessary and that’s the point.
Sometimes he shows frustration and that can boil up into a referee getting upset with him and booking him for a tackle he might not have got booked for.”
A definite change of tune after describing the Ivorian international as ‘overzealous at times’ on the pitch, although he does have a point. I’m going to go ahead and coin this attack on players as “Joey Barton syndrome”. We saw it with Alan Smith, James Perch, and of course the diseases namesake – Joey Barton. Referees have a tendency to trip over themselves and lose the supposed objectivity that allows them to make the correct decisions.
He then changed his attention away from Tioté and onto the powers that be, who regulate the beautiful game as we know it.
“It’s part of the game where the Referee’s Association, UEFA, FIFA and maybe managers have a little problem because the art of tackling and of the physical battle is taken out of the game and it’s taken something away from the game; I’m not talking about the World Cup final where people were genuinely fouling each other.
In the Premier League you see a lot of honest tackles and some of the bookings for minor fouls put players on edge and all of a sudden a team is down to ten men.
I will guarantee it’ll cost some team maybe even staying in the Premier League for a sending-off this season. A mistimed challenge, it’s so quick now you could miss it by a millisecond. People are diving and not getting booked. I don’t think that’s the right agenda if I’m honest.
The Premier League is different to Holland because there are more styles of play. In Holland everyone’s technical, they play more football. But in England it’s different, you have everything in the Premier League.”
Perhaps unwittingly, Pardew actually mentioned the problem with English football – it wants to be the beautiful game as it should be. As it was all those years ago, with technical players galore! …which further raises the question: are referees being instructed to behave in this way in order to make examples of specific types of players with their respective styles?
How many times have we seen Joey Barton getting wound up by players gone unpunished? The obvious instance was the draw with Wolves earlier in the season where Barton was praised for keeping his cool and just accepting he was a marked man. On the flipside, we also saw what happens when all of that tension is released inside of Joey’s head at Blackburn, when Joey punched Morten Gamst Pederson in the stomach.
On the other hand, maybe referees recognise the problem but are focusing on the wrong aspect. Who would be a referee?
NUFCBlog Author: Thump
Some say his bones are black and white but that is yet to be medically proven. Currently writes for a few different publications and likes to assert his imaginary authority on nobody in particular.
Beware: eats children.
Thump has written 36 articles on this blog.
I really dislike the play acting. And I think the referees aloow certain players to be targeted and others to be the target of their wraith. Plus there is the human nature aspect of allowing the little guys to get away with more dirty play against bigger opponents. I’m not sure I could be a whistle blower, even for a kids match.