Guilty | John Terry drives away from Wembley having heard the FA’s verdict. (Image | The Telegraph)
John Terry was banned for four matches yesterday and fined £220,000, a measly sum for a Premier League footballer.
Reactions varied on Twitter, from those that believed he should be banned for life and jailed, on the extreme side, to others that asked why he was brought to trial in the first place having been cleared by the courts.
Hopefully Sky Sports will appreciate how long this took and won’t try to sue us. Please. (Image | Sky Sports, very graciously)
Deadline day once again produced its usual mix of excitement, hyperbole and confusion yesterday, with a standard assortment of a couple of ‘blockbuster’ moves and many, many loan deals done between Premier League teams and lower-league clubs.
As is our duty, though, we’ve dredged through the rumours, the hopes and the hogwash to bring you the ten most intriguing deals of yesterday’s shopping frenzy…
Why always him: Joey Barton‘s behaviour against Manchester City was undoubtedly unacceptable, however, other players haven’t been so heavily punished for similar examples of ill-discipline. (Image | Herald Sun)
Queens Park Rangers midfielder Joey Barton was yesterday (23 May) handed a 12 match ban for violent conduct during the clash with Manchester City on the final day of the season.
Barton was shown the red card after elbowing Carlos Tevez in the face, and then kicking out at Sergio Aguero and clashing with Vincent Kompany after he’d already been ordered to leave the pitch.
The Football Association (FA) chose to extend the original four match suspension by eight games, and issued a £75,000 fine to the QPR captain.
Sergio Aguero fires past Paddy Kenny to secure Manchester City‘s first title in 44 years. (Image | The Guardian)
The ultimate round of matches of the 2011-2012 Premier League season had more twists and turns than a rollercoaster. In this vein, footballing clichés were wheeled out by the bucket load. At Manchester City, it really was a game of two halves, as the league leaders thoroughly pummelled the Queens Park Rangers defence, peppering shots at Paddy Kenny and any other body the R’s could get in the way. 44 of them, in fact. With Manchester United maintaining a 1-0 lead over Sunderland for the majority of the game at the Stadium of Light, all eyes were on the Etihad Stadium. Pablo Zabaleta set the Citizens on their way just before half-time, at almost exactly the same point as Bolton Wanderers completed their turnaround against Stoke City to take a 2-1 lead. QPR were relegated, Bolton were staying up, and City had a hand on the trophy. Surely this would be it from Mark Hughes’ ultra-defensive side?
Footballers are remarkably petulant, spoilt, egregious individuals. They complain instantly at even the slightest hint of perceived injustice, yet they are quite happy to commit acts of sometimes shocking indiscipline. Naturally, some players attain reputations as “bad boys”. Duncan Ferguson, Wayne Rooney, Eric Cantona, Robbie Savage and Joey Barton are just a handful of notorious names from the Premier League era. Similarly, some players are, on a football field at least, “whiter than white”. Most notable of these shining examples are Michael Owen, Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard.
Rangers captain Joey Barton discussed his sending off at length on social networking site, Twitter.
The last is not seen as a dirty player, and thus it was certainly notable that his extremely ill-timed and reckless challenge on Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Adam Hamill received just a yellow card. Particularly in light of Vincent Kompany’s dismissal against Manchester United in today’s FA Cup encounter, Lampard’s “exoneration” appears to coincide even less with the rules of the game than it did at the time. Queens Park Rangers’ Barton, meanwhile, was shown the red card by Neil Swarbrick during a home clash with Norwich City, after squaring up with Canaries midfielder Bradley Johnson.
