<div><figure class="external-image"><img src="/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/badtackle.jpg" alt="badtackle.jpg" align="left"></figure></div>In the least shocking news of the week, Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel picked up yet another red card for a shockingly bad tackle. This time it was a sliding tackle and though the challenge was one-footed, Mikel came in with his studs up (and nowhere near the ball) on Everton’s Phil Neville.
This was the fourth red card Mikel has received in about a season and a half of being a Chelsea player. Of course Avram Grant took his player’s side “I will not speak of the red card,” Grant spoke. “But if it was a red card, many players who were given yellow cards should have had a red card too. I will not speak about it. I don’t say that I have nothing to say about it. I have a lot of things to say about it.”
Grant should not be defending a player with a history of poor tackles. Instead, he should be working with him on the training ground or sending him down to the reserves for further work. I hate to single him out as he is far from being the only player to be guilty of these dangerous tackles but timing is everything in life, and in tackling too.
There is no question that Mikel is a phenomenal athlete and is a fine passer of the ball but his other skills are questionable. He does not seem to have a grasp of the fundamentals of tackling and marking (e.g. his recent hacking of Peter Crouch) or he has been trained using videos from the 70s when this sort of thing was tolerated and encouraged. In this era, where the players are supposed to be protected from dangerous tackles, he could be viewed as a liability to his team.
Steve Sidwell, brought on soon after Mikel’s dismissal, also deserves some scorn for what the Independent described as “an attempt at arthroscopic surgery” on Lee Carsley’s knee.
What do you think? Are the rules strict enough? Too harsh? To me want to see more of these bone-crunching tackles?

Has everyone forgotten how to tackle?

Has everyone forgotten how to tackle? - World Soccer Talk

Norman Hubbard of ESPN Soccernet has written an <a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=494662&amp;cc=5901" title="ESPN Soccernet">interesting article</a> on who he thinks have been the worst players of the season so far. Personally, most of the article is spot on but there are a few choices that I don’t agree with.
Liverpool – Peter Crouch. 
Has Hubbard not seen Sissoko play this season? I’d easily nominate him ahead of Crouch for worst player. Hubbard also cites Crouch for a poor performance against Marseille but fails to mention that Crouch has scored 4 goals in 6 CL appearances this season.
Manchester City – Darius Vassell. Vassell is probably the last of the Man City forwards that I would nominate though certainly the whole crew deserve a nomination. Vassell has been stuck out wide as a right winger&nbsp;and you can hardly fault him for that. He’s simply going out there and working as hard as he can in the role he’s been given.&nbsp; A better choice may have been either Samaras or Bianchi who are usually quite anonymous and don’t appear to be working too hard when given an opportunity.
Aston Villa – Curtis Davies. I concur that Davies has not had an impact on the club as of yet but he has been solid in Villa’s recent matches.&nbsp; To say that Zat Knight has made&nbsp; a rather quicker impact is not telling the whole story. I think the rest of the defensive unit around Knight has helped him tremendously but that has not prevent him from looking poor at times (particularly against Manchester United and Chelsea).&nbsp; I would have nominated Stillian Petrov who has only shown brief flashes of what he is capable of doing.
Who would you nominate and why?

Worst players of the season?

Worst players of the season? - World Soccer Talk

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Has everyone forgotten how to tackle?

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Worst players of the season?