TWO YEARS ago, Arsenal’s season unravelled in dramatic circumstances at St Andrew’s when Eduardo suffered a broken leg, they dropped two points in their ultimately unsuccessful challenge for the title and William Gallas, their captain, famously sulked with a massive Champions League game just around the corner. The Arsenal fans returning for the first time since that day in February 2008 might have felt an unsettling sense of history repeating itself.
Mercifully, there was nothing like the horrific injury suffered by Eduardo, and the game was played largely in a sporting manner, but Arsène Wenger was upset by a high tackle from Craig Gardner that left Cesc Fabregas doubtful for the Champions League quarter-final against Barcelona on Wednesday.
Nor was Wenger pleased by the way Arsenal surrendered vital points after they had the game in the bag and appeared guilty of grandstanding before the stoppage-time equaliser, credited somewhat dubiously to Kevin Phillips. “I don’t know how Cesc is, medically,” Wenger said. “We have to assess him in the morning. It was a bad tackle — one more. He got tackled at the knee. I don’t know why it was not a foul. When a player got kicked at the knee, I can only say he has been tackled at the knee.”
The tackle came towards the end of the first half. Fabregas, inset, received treatment and hobbled for several minutes but finished the game. Wenger said he had wanted to replace him but the player wanted to stay on. When he was pressed further on the tackle, his voice broke with emotion: “You’re trying to make controversy. Leave me alone for ****’s sake. You don’t need me to see what happened. I can give you my opinion on the football, but don’t try to drag me into your controversies.”
Alex McLeish, the Birmingham manager, admitted the tackle by Gardner was “robust” adding: “I know what Arsène is getting at but there were a few Arsenal tackles of similar ilk. All the mind games before the game made me realise that Arsenal were apprehensive about coming here and so it proved.”
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