I am not sure whether or not we need a hard man but we certainly need the 12th man. Let’s raise the volume, particularly at home games, and put some pressure on the officials and opposition teams.
A regular first team hard man would be a pointless waste of a starting position... but I do like the idea of bringing on someone in the 85th minute, someone who is entirely expendable and of no importance to the squad, with the sole intention of them exacting retribution on anyone who has committed an unpunished assault on one of our players during the game.
Yes, but for those 2 or 3 matches where he was sent off he would have accumulated a 12 match suspension! (3+4+5 matches). Not really much of a deterrent when he's banned for almost one third of the season, is it?I've been thinking that since yesterday, but I had Pepe in mind. They'd come on, mete out the justice, get sent off. They'd only have to do it 2 or 3 times before the penny dropped with the opposition and they stopped doing it and started to play football instead. The refs are useless.
Great post and unfortunately true.But back then the other teams weren't trying to cripple us because we weren't as dominant as we are now. What is happening now is 100% a new tactic managers have thought up to stop us. They tried pressing us, they tried long balls, they tried parking the bus and now they are onto plan D which is to kick our best players off the pitch. If we tried fighting fire with fire you could stick your mortgage on that player being shown a red card instantly.