Wolverhampton Wanderers, says manager Mick McCarthy, are not a dirty team. I tend to agree with him and in actual fact I don’t think the Premier League is as overgrown with rough teams as it has been in the past. It has physical teams who occasionally cross the line, and it has the teams I consider dirty, the sides who employ diving, referee-baiting and time-wasting and generally get away with it.
Wolves aren’t usually considered to be any of those but have come under fire this week for the tactics they’ve used against Newcastle United and Fulham. Reading Ceefax when I got home from recording the podcast last night (a month without broadband turned the classic on-screen information service into something of a bad habit for me), I saw that McCarthy had come to the defence of his strategy and his players.
The debate was triggered by the unfortunate injury sustained by Fulham’s Bobby Zamora last weekend, when his leg buckled under the weight of a challenge from Wolves’ Karl Henry.
In truth it wasn’t the kind of tackle that necessarily makes a team dirty. Every team over of a season will have a player or two that puts in a bad challenge with the potential to break legs. Henry’s tackle on Zamora was awkward and over-enthusiastic, but ordinarily wouldn’t result in the player and his team being labelled dirty except by supporters of the team on the receiving end - football supporters have long memories.
But the Zamora injury incident has not been judged in isolation and nor should it be. Wolves picked up a red card and a host of yellows against Fulham but the real backdrop for judgement in this case occurred in the previous match.
Picking up six yellows in a red doesn’t necessarily make a team dirty. Breaking a leg in a clumsy tackle doesn’t necessarily make a player dirty either. But anybody who saw Wolves’ performance against Newcastle would find it difficult to defend them. The physical punishment dished out to Joey Barton - primarily by Henry - was blatant and targeted, and it is this that will be cited by Wanderers’ critics.
McCarthy can defend himself all he wants but the evidence to the contrary has been created by the actions of his own players. The reputation developed during the Newcastle game won’t be easy to shake off and opponents and referees will have plenty to say about any Wolves roughness over the course of the season. It might just cost them dearly.