Quite enough blogwidth has been taken up already by the Shawcross: Ramsey incident without murmurs now steaming in late with studs showing.
But we do feel compelled to offer one calm observation.
Within minutes of the fateful challenge we were being reassured that there just couldn’t have been any intent behind it because Ryan Shawcross ‘isn’t that kind of player‘.
Now implicit within that statement is the notion that there is such a thing as ‘that kind of player‘.
Because otherwise, stripped of its contrast, the statement is completely meaningless.
(And those men’s mensas Shearer and Pulis would surely never say anything completely meaningless.)
But the thing is that, to date, every agent of a leg-breaking challenge has, we have categorically been told, not been ‘that kind of player‘.
Which leave us with this improbable scenario…
There are, lurking in our professional leagues, examples of ‘that kind of player‘.
But none of them have yet done ‘that kind of thing‘.
Meanwhile ‘that kind of thing‘ has been perpetrated on several occasions.
But only by people who are ‘not that kind of player.’
Amazing.
I wonder what odds you’d have got on that?
