Bale cheats again + Chamakh’s time should be up
October 13, 2012
I grudgingly sit down to watch the England San Marino match pretty well aware that I don’t particularly care what happens. Obviously England are going to win. Obviously they’re going to do so by a decent margin. I just hope that the Ox puts in an entertaining performance and that neither of the Arsenal contingent get horribly taken out by any disgustingly reckless challeng…oh shit.
There were only four minutes gone when their keeper Aldo Simoncini decided to race out of his goal and body slam Theo Walcott like some WWF wrestler or Harald Schumacher back at the 1982 World Cup. I’m not convinced that this one was intentional but it was definitely reckless and we await news on how serious Theo’s injuries might be. He was being kept in hospital overnight as a precaution having struggled to breath and reportedly coughed up some blood and the suspicion is he’ll have suffered at least one broken rib.
On any other occasion I’d be on here bemoaning the fact that the keeper entirely avoided punishment and that for some reason no penalty was given but frankly I don’t really care about that. I’m just hoping that Theo’s injuries are not too serious. How are we supposed to sit around and bitch about him not signing his new deal if we’re too busy worrying about his general health?
The injury aside, the game was the formality that we all expected. I thought Oxlade played very well in parts, showing odd flashes of the skill that Roy Hodgson clearly craves for this England side. He’s still very raw and makes the mistakes that you’d expect a nineteen year old to make but there was more than enough good stuff to justify his inclusion and he even topped it off with his first international goal, a smartly stabbed effort into the top corner late on.
Elsewhere Aaron Ramsey apparently played well in Wales’ 2-1 defeat of Scotland but of course it was Gareth Bale who took all the plaudits for his two goal salvo in the last ten minutes. This despite the fact that the cheating winger did what cheats often do which is to cheat the ref by blatantly diving for the penalty which cheated Scotland out of their 1-0 lead. Chris Coleman may have come out to defend him after the match and the media may be happy to ignore it but there is no getting around the fact that that was a blatant dive last night from probably the worst culprit as far as diving goes that I can remember.
I know you’d expect me to say that as a red blooded Arsenal fan who hates our gap minding neighbours but every single time I see Bale play he dives. Not only does he go down under little or usually no contact but he stays down. Not content to just cheat the opposition out of a free kick he’ll happily clutch his leg or beat the turf like the pain is impossible to bear in an effort to get his usually innocent opponent booked or sent off.
He did it to us to win a penalty in the 5-2 last season and if he carries on as he has pretty soon every opponent in the league will have a grievance with Gareth Bale. The media can conveniently ignore it and he can make all the Care Bear heart shapes that he wants. Everybody knows deep down that he’s a cheat.
In other international news Santi Cazorla played the full 90 in Spain’s defeat of Belarus while all of our centre backs were busy. The Verminator played the full match in Belgium’s 3-0 against Serbia, Mertesacker did the same for Germany as they tonked Ireland 6-1 (Podolski playing a 23 minute cameo), Djourou completed the 90 for Switzerland against Norway as did Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud in France’s surprise 1-0 friendly defeat against Japan.
In non-international break news Marouane Chamakh has yet again been linked with a move back to Bordeaux as their president Jean-Louis Triaud has been making overtures to the press:
There is a serious chance Chamakh could return.
Money is the key question because salaries in the Premier League are enormous but it’s also necessary for him to play.
In December 2011 I sent a message to say the door was open for a return but he wanted to stay.
Now the message is there again with the same objective.
The objective may be the same but so is the stumbling block – Chamakh’s rumoured £50,000 a week salary. If the club don’t see a future for Chamakh in the Arsenal first team – and it seems pretty evident that they don’t – then they really need to find a way to make this deal work for all parties. At the very least that should mean allowing him to leave on a free transfer. With two years still to run on his deal that would still save us around £5.2 million in wages.
Come on Arsenal. We don’t need another Almunia situation on our hands.
If You Liked This...
- Arsenal 0 – 1 Man City: Even Wenger looks tired of Chamakh
- Arsenal 3-1 Stoke City – Van Persie steals it + Gervinho better than Bale
- Olympiacos 3 – 1 Arsenal – A timely transfer window tip-off. Not that I care or anything
- Wenger rages at press inconsistency. Press laughs in his face.
- Squillaci’s future up in the air + Vermaelen’s icy stare worth at least ten points
Comments
74 Responses to “Bale cheats again + Chamakh’s time should be up”
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I think Bale should be Tom Daley’s partner he is as good as Tom at diving.Last night was a disgrace surely refs from abroad should be warned about these people.
Your are blind. Even Maloney has said it wasn’t a dive. He clipped him. He went down. Penalty. End of.
Maybe your beloved Arsenal should buy him to fill the void left by your two cheats, Pires and Henry.
Err…yeah, okay.
http://footballfunnys.lockerdome.com/articles/101456162
My God you gooners are worried.BIOYGC
Maybe the gooners should welcome back the hand ball king Henri when Walcott goes to Chelski
I’m a gap minding Spurs fan. But don’t worry the gap is only 2 points.
It wasn’t a penalty. Bale’s right foot clipped the defender’s right knee marginally. You can see by the defender’s reaction that there was slight contact but nowhere near enough to go down. But that’s what modern players do in the box (from all teams). I hate it and wish it didn’t happen.
I’m a spurs fan. Bale dives… But you can tell there was contact (even if not intentional) because Maloney looks like he nearly loses his balance too which indicates contact between his knee and bales ankle. Not a dive but probably not a penalty
haha, and if you watched the game you would have seen your precious Ramsey had a shocking game. Also you forgot to mention Bales second goal as a absolute peach.
interview with Maloney taken from sky!!!!!
Bale has been accused of diving in winning the penalty which led to him scoring the equaliser from the penalty spot in Cardiff.
The Tottenham man went on to score a stunning late goal as Chris Coleman’s troops came from behind to take all three points and leave Scotland’s hopes of qualifying for the World Cup in tatters.
Wigan forward Maloney has jumped to the defence of Bale admitting he did make contact with the winger and he has apologised to his Scotland team-mates for the incident which turned the game.
“The penalty decision swung the game in their favour and I feel awful about that,” Maloney told the Daily Record. “I think there might have been a bit of contact, to be fair to Bale.
“It wasn’t a challenge as such, he just ran across me and part of his legs touched mine. I don’t think he dived. It was just a coming-together.
Think you will find that last nights penalty was stonewall, even maloney admitted it. Do your research, it’s not hard, it’s everywhere. Talking about cheats, you have a statue of a man responsible for the worst deliberate hand ball since the hand of god
Haha,the hypocrisy of the Woolwich lot,maybe sunshine, you are too young to remember Pires,or Limpar or anyone else Wenger taught to gain an unfair advantage.You gotta love the woolwich boys’ they do like to laugh at themselves.
Bale’s leg was clipped (as Maloney said) which caused Bale’s leg to move into the path of his other leg, causing him to trip. But you wouldn’t know anything about why that happens because you sit on your arse writing rubbish all day and couldn’t run to save your life.
http://sport.stv.tv/football/194684-shaun-maloney-left-devastated-after-conceding-penalty-in-cardiff/?
come on. The only man to dive was Ramsey. Did you muppets watch the game ?
Shaun Maloney cleared the Spurs man of taking a dive and apologised to his Scottish team-mates for his challenge which all but ends Craig Levein’s hopes of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup.
“The penalty decision swung the game in their favour and I feel awful about that. I think there might have been a bit of contact, to be fair to Bale,” he told The Daily Record.
Ha ha what a load of gooner crap
Coys !!
pretty conclusive that. surprise surprise.
disgusting player like young, a johnson, wooney, barton, terry etc…says a lot about a person who openly supports either or alike.
Hahahahaha!
Didn’t think I’d get a critique of my own athletic ability. Well played, sir. You win this round.
Blimey, you lot are fairly touchy about this aren’t you? Didn’t even think Spurs fans read my blog.
So what’s the official line? That Bale isn’t a cheat? Or that he is a cheat but it’s fine because of Henry’s handball for France in 2009 when he was a Barcelona player?
Obviously I don’t expect you to castigate probably your best player but you must be aware of the reputation that he’s bound to get if he carries on doing what he does.
It wasn’t a dive. Maloney, they guy why conceded the pen said
“It wasn’t a challenge as such, he just ran across me and part of his legs touched mine. I don’t think he dived. It was just a coming-together.
http://footballfunnys.lockerdome.com/articles/101456162
Sorry to burst your bubble but Maloney admitted that there was contact, guess that makes your argument a little pointless now but don’t let that get in the way of the bandwagon everyone has jumped on.
Nothing like a bit of hyperbolic nonsense from media and amateur bloggers is there?
This article came up on spurs’s newsnow, thus us spurs fans coming on here. The official line is that most spurs fans are slightly dismayed at Bale’s theatrics but like all fans get defensive if others criticise our boy, especially when it turns out he didn’t actually dive on this occasion. There’s no defending it when he does go down easily, which isn’t the whole time, but is too much. But it is funny how quickly fans of other teams forget their own divers and come across all self righteous though. I think that top attacking players who get hacked down by inferior defenders (Henry, C Ronaldo, Bale) start to feel like they have a right to dive , which they don’t. Only Messi seems to buck the trend….
Arsenal fan here so clearly I have bias, but as a Canadian I grew up watching hockey which is all big hits for the most part. As such, I constantly have to defend soccer/football to my friends who don’t watch the game, and it’s incidents like this that make it hard to do so. I hate diving. It’s infuriating when the opponent does it, and downright embarrassing when your team does it. Yes Arsenal players do dive (Chamakh is actually pretty bad for it), and most players will go down under contact regardless as long as it’s in the box. Bale is awful for it, and does it more frequently than anyone else I can think of, and to be fair this is definitely due to the fact that his skill gets him into those situations more often. But come on, that video above is pretty conclusive- there probably was contact, but you can see how he purposely changes his stride to fall in a heap. It may have been contact but it didn’t trip him, and that means he fell of his own accord (i.e. a dive). The myth that contact in the box means it’s a penalty is ludicrous. You get a PK if someone fouls you in the box, not touches you.
Anyway, I hope we can get past the Arsenal/Spurs thing here and just agree that diving is a fucking disgrace.
How sad that footballers go down so dishonestly.In Slo Mo you can see he dive. He didn’t have to go down but having been touched he did the thing he has been taught to at SHL.
But he’s good last years dive in the 5-2 was very deceitful and fooled Mike Dean
Hahahaha all these dodgy little spurs fans coming on to an arsenal site and trying to convince themselves that it was a clean pen, maybe just maybe he’s sock was brushed as he ran by or he’s shoe hit a blade of grass, but bale has shown time and time again he is a big time diver of the highest order, the only reason he gets away with it is because he’s British, and he plays for tottenham a team that every pundit up and down the land feels sorry for because they never get anywhere, and to all you spuds out there I stopped listening to about diving when you tried to justify the bale dive in the 5.2 roasting.
Look at all the little spuddies! Hahaha
Bale is probably the biggest cheat in football today.
Only a spuddie would defend that.
I think this is hilarious – still laughing at all the little spuddies who read our blogs. Cant say I blame them – where else can they get quality, accurate and honest views?
Dont slate the little spuddies, its not their fault they support spurs. They are stuck with it now. It must be awful for them, forever in our shadow.
Ramsey’s dive seems to have been swept under the carpet… Did you actually watch the game?
Maybe you should get some glasses and watch Ramsey (so glad he broke his leg) take a pathetic dive earlier in the game.
I’m not sure but I have feeling that you might have touched a nerve with some of our North London neighbours.
The one thing that you can put money on is that the monkey faced one will be certain to try it on the next time we meet. We just have to hope that the ref does get taken in by it.
Well if in your words Bale is the worst culprit for diving that you can remember, you obviously are just typical goner scum that never sees any of his own players dive. Or you suffer from a complete memory loss you twat.
That should’ve read read does not. What a plank!
Mind the gap.you goon rent boy
Every club has had a player who dived, gooners more than most Get over it, jealousy is not an attractive trait.
You have to be kidding?
An Arsebal site saying :”Someone Cheated”.
Surely you spot the irony? 1919 anyone.
BTW maloney said he clipped him but to a gooner What has truth got to do with it?
I am usually fair with you lot but this Bullsh*t makes me sick and drops you down to chav level.
Oh look at all the spuddies, coming together trying to convince us about how ole bad and mean Pires and Henry are. Guess that happens when you lose a 13 point lead and finish fourth only not make it into the champs league. Actually henry scored 226 goals for us and pires fucked you every time. Ole bale dives around and still gets his ass kicked 5-2.
Honestly, is it lonely constantly living in our shadow? Spot on marble, what you sy true, screm em spuds
You gooners and your mind the gap shit .when was the last time you won some thing . Only got third cos of shit goal keepin and you know it !!
The last time we won the league was in your little dump wasn’t it? Was ur monkey son bale even born the last time u wankers won the league? And dont get al jumpy on us for the mind the gap. Who were the idiots who started that bullshit? Our supposed worst team in 15 years booted ur “golden generation dream team” asses to thursday night. And its going so well for you there…..
Every year you get a little bit shitter and we get better are time will come prick boy
Liam no need to drop to their level.
notice how they blythely ignore 1919 a PROVEN and ADMITTED case of CLUB CHEATING by Arsenal.
I normally don’t mind gooners as now they play decent football like we always have, are sensibly run and are lucky enough to have had a manager with vision for near 20 yrs although last year the gooner comments about Wenger were pathetic.
But this sort of drivel just lowers them to Chelsea levels and IMHO shames them.
Anything for “spud hits” & next, even their girlfriends which shows how low some drop.
All of you stupid gooners (ie NOT the sensible ones) should go and support Chelsea as they are more to your taste: cheats, pimps and racists.
1919 means that ARSENAL HAVE never EARNED THE RIHGT TO PLAY TOP LEVEL ENGLISH FOOTBALL. I wonder how many Gooners know that to be true or do I see a rush of truth denials coming?
I agree! Arsenal should not be in the top flight league because of 1919! Everyone knows it, it’s our team’s permanent shame. Every time we cheer, deep inside it hurts us because we know we should be relegated due to these recent shenanigans on our part.
It’s also why I advocate kicking Germany out of the European Union. Kaiser Wilhelm II is wrong for the Germany, and wrong for the EU!
Bale is more of a wuss than a cheat. He doesn’t like being tackled and he also gets chopped more than any other player. So he sometimes hurdles out of the way and hits the grass. But for a gooner to moan about cheating is ridiculous. Forget about recent cheats and divers like nasri, fabregas and Henry, what about arsenals appalling red card record over the last 10 years….isn’t hacking people down a worse form of cheating?
The only reason I posted was your reference to a Spurs player and your calling him a cheat. Who else, apart from sychophantic Arsenal fans, were you aiming for, if not Spurs supporters?
It’s nothing to do with this being an Arsenal site, but more to do with your and some of your fellow Arsenal fans writing here, if their illiterate English can be considered ‘writing’, being utter hypocrites. Fair enough if you don’t mind that tag – one of my best friends is an Arsenal fan and while he admired the great skills of players like Henry and Pires, he sure didn’t admire their cheating, especially Pires diving. Fortunately, not all Arsenal fans are as one-eyed and as illiterate as this site suggests.
Justin P : none of your comparisons are even close as it is about an “EARNED” result but I will let it go there for peace’s sake.
gazz fox: “wuss” with two serious ankle injuries ALREADY? Anyone with one neurone knows that the faster you go the more easily you tip and if you are also dribbling a football (which to aid those who don’t know) also requires even more extreme balance. it is very easy to bring someone down on the slightest touch.
Bale had said that if it is a difference between and injury and a fall, then he will fall every time: he said that after returning from the malicious Adams tackle caused injury. In his context it had NOTHING to do with earning penalties but avoiding injury as speed is his main weapon. Ask Cliff Jones about the number of people who tried to cripple him whilst playing
(he was very close to Bale in style) and what finally made him retire.
Jeez, MH, who let the dogs out?
Now, now spuds, there is no need to post comments like this ”Maybe you should get some glasses and watch Ramsey (so glad he broke his leg)” disgraceful comment, how low can someone go? But thats by the way.
Bale is one of the worst culprits when it comes to diving, he goes down as if he has been hit by a grenade, a Grenade! And thats not even the worst part, the worst part of the breaststroke olympian Bale is that he is a terrible diver, i remember a match where someone brushed his right leg, Bale as per usual flew into the sky, 2 seconds later he landed and began to clutch his left leg!? If you’re going to dive at least do it right.
Now stop defending the indefensible, But i guess thats too much to ask, even Chelsea fans will tell you that John ‘The Cunt’ Terry is just misunderstood and he is a ‘real man’ for standing up to injustice.
Will, how does rolling on floor clutching your ankle AND knee at the same time while pretending to be hit by a sniper help prevent injury? Looking forward to your answer.
Walcott is the fastest player in the league, yet i don’t see him performing somersaults after getting tackled.
Will- My point (which I thought was obvious) was that things that happened in the early 1900s are not really relevant to discussions of whether Bale has trouble staying on his feet or not. The people involved in that are likely no longer alive, so bringing it up as if any modern Arsenal fans would care is laughable.
People claiming that Bale is okay because former Arsenal players dived a few years ago is one thing and at least vaguely relevant. 1919 is a joke!
The trouble with you, Khalifha, is that you love your team before you love the sport.
I support Spurs but I would never condone cheating on the part of any of our players, never. The trouble with a crap article like this one, is that it leaves the author wide open if his own team has never had such players. Didn’t you have Henry and Pires in that great team that went throught the season unbeaten? What, at least two cheats helped you achieve that – so much for records, eh?
And would the author have written a similar article on Ashley Young and United? I read recently that the knighted Ferguson wasn’t adverse to getting decisions his team’s way, even if it meant players going down like Pires used to for your team. The player who revealed that fact in his autobiography was soon shipped cos no smoke without fie, hey, as the ‘great’ Henry could confirm when he cheated Ireland out of a World Cup qualification.
Justin P, if 1919, is a ‘joke’, what about Remembrance Day on 11th November commemorating 1918?
When you invoke time as being a factor, bear in mind that it won’t be long before today is ancient history.
So according to Spurs fans, we can’t criticise Bale for being one of the worst cheats in the country because players for our team have dived in the past? Seems like very poor logic. Best not criticise Henry for handballing anymore because VDV scored against us with a nifty touch of the hand himself.
Bale is a very talented player but a terrible cheat, the same applies to a lot of good footballers, Suarez and Ronaldo for example. Some Arsenal players will drop easily but we don’t have any in the current squad that have a particularly bad reputation for theatrics (Arteta and Coquelin will both dive for example, but not every time someone comes within five yards of them). Bale is a serial cheat who uses diving as a large element of his game but although I find his face unpalatable I’d still happily have him in our squad because when he plays well he is effective, though I do think he has too many off days.
So, Zinc, run that past me one more time. Acording to your post, there are degrees of cheating. It’s a novel way of looking at it, I must say that, or rationalising it, more like. So Pires was a cheat but not a ‘serial’ cheat like Bale, in your opinion, and Henry wasn’t really a cheat, it was just that the cameras ‘happened’ to be there and ‘caught’ him handling the ball. By your ‘logic’, if the camera hadn’t been positioned there, we would all see Henry as the epitome of footballing inocence.
You should enter politics – you’re half way there already.
Not sure what Zinc has said that’s so difficult to understand to be honest, Cliffyboy.
He’s essentially saying that all teams have or have had players in the past who have at some point or another gone down easily. Nobody could deny that. And yet some players, such as Bale or Suarez, are far worse than others in that they do it all the time.
You seem to think I’m a hypocrite for labelling Bale a cheat because Arsenal players have dived in the past. But by that logic no football fan can ever write or say anything negative about any opposition player because someone from their own team might have made a similar transgression in the past. Fair enough if that’s what you believe but if we all felt that way it would make football blogging and discussion in general a fairly dull and tame pursuit.
Yes cliffboy, exactly – there are degrees of cheating, it’s not black and white, like most things – on those rare occasions where I’ve sped it’s been at 77mph, when Santos does it it’s 130mph. I didn’t day Pires wasn’t a serial cheat or Henry didn’t cheat, you’ve made those assertions yourself, good luck to you if it makes you feel nice inside complementing legendary Arsenal players – they were bloody good weren’t they.
Some players will cheat at any given chance if they believe it will give them an advantage, they will drop every time they’re challenged, not only will some dive but they will pretend they’ve been badly hurt by another players challenge in an attempt to get that player booked or sent off, others will go down easily under contact in the penalty area or ignore an accidentyal handball instead of being honest with the ref and stopping the game, both are cheating but to different degrees. Neither is right or acceptable but one type is part of a consistent behaviour and therfore garners a bad reputation whereas the other goes by with far less attention.
I’ve seen Arteta dive/go down softly on quite a few occasions but I’ve never heard anyone describe him as a diver or cheat nor does he feature in those ‘worst diver’ lists that float about in conversation; unlike Bale and Suarez, but that’s purely because they absolutely deserve it because they’re some of the worst cheats in the league.
Yes, don’t criticise the ref who let Chelsea beat Wigan with two offside goals despite being guff all match long because Arsenal scored an offside goal in 2003. I totally agree with these Spurs fans and they practice what they preach because you never see Spurs fans complain about anything.
It is quite funny.
Ramsey had a low-key game, definitely, and it was made much worse for those two points where he seemed to have attempted a dive – although, to his credit, he did get back to his feet instantly – and by that stupid attempted chip when he should have fed Bale to empty goal. Still, it wasn’t such a bad game either, even if Ramsey should thank Bale for vindicating him.
As for Bale – he’s a diver. His dives are hardly any different from what Spanish and Italian divers customarily do. If you watch the replay, instead of reading the press (pics or it didn’t happen, guys!) you’ll see Bale tripping on his own leg and falling like Bastille. And that’s what he usually does. And he usually gets his team the penalties. (Which also means we’re dealing with refs who seem to support Tottenham as well…)
All Maloney said is that there might have been contact – and it’s pretty obvious in football that you get a lot of marginal contact which doesn’t amount to fouls. That’s why defenders customarily raise their hands while passing behind rival strikers – there’s so much marginal contact that the striker might use it as an occasion to force his issue. And Bale does that. It’s a fact.
Totts: Henry and Pires WERE Arsenal players. WERE. YEARS AGO. Bale is HERE AND NOW. When Henry and Pires dived, you bitched. When Bale dives, we do the same. And it’s fair to defend your favourite player, but just as no Arsenal fan can claim Henry’s 2009 handball wasn’t a handball at all, you can’t claim Maloney did foul Bale, cause he DIDN’T.
Zinc, if you want to live in a dream world where the dictionary meanings of words change according to your moods and beliefs, by all means do so, but count me out. The trouble with this crap article is that it sits on a holier than thou premise, which is where and why it comes unstuck. You can rationalise cheating for all your worth, if it makes you sleep well at nights, but in my book, a cheat’s a cheat, whether it’s Terry, Bale, Pires and Henry, Young, Ferguson, Dyson, and any other player or manager you want to name.
Is it just a coincidence, then, that the author is an Arsenal fan and the subject of his invective is a top Spurs’ player? No Suarez or Young for this bloke, no, he wants to give Spurs a kick, that’s his real beef. If he was remotely interested in the sport before his club, and its traditional rivalry with Spurs, he’d be bemoaning the cheating that goes on week after week with ineffectual bodies like the F.A., UEFA, and FIFA supposedly over-seeing it but really condoning it. What about Mendes ‘goal’ against United a few years’ ago? Guess you and the author found it a laugh cos it was Spurs. No concerns about us being cheated out of a win.
Oh no, this author nailed his colours to the mast. He couldn’t give a flying fig about cheating – his real beef, like yours, is about one of our players.
Why would I be talking about Suarez or Young the day after the Wales game? Suarez and Young were not the story. Bale was the story.
If it helps I wrote about Suarez and Noble’s diving last week, the day after their incidents. As it happens I wrote about Bale too because of his extraordinary attempt to get Brad Guzan sent off.
And yes, Bale is of particular interest to Arsenal fans. Of course he is. Because he plays for Spurs. And because it was his dive at the Emirates last season that gave your lot a penalty to put us two goals behind.
Au contraire, the marble halls, au contraire, the ‘logic’ you refer to is a straw-clutcher, and you’re forced into making assumptions about millions of other people, simply because your article doesn’t focus on cheating, like you’re now pretending, but on Bale and Spurs.
I’m not an Arsenal fan, I admit, and for many years took a perverse delight in how boring Arsenal were. Wenger changed that and, like other football lovers, made supporters like myself admit they played lovely football with players like Henry having breath-taking skills, so much so that he even went on Parkinson.
So tell me, would Parkinson have had him on after he revealed his core and true character against Ireland?
And you can’t tell me some Arsenal fans, the ones who truly love football as a sport, would not have thought he lost something as a man in what he did.
If he’s happy looking in the mirror each day, good luck to him, but I don’t envy his talent for a second, as much as I loved playing the game.
Yeah, I’ve just read that article on the ‘When Is A Dive Not A Dive’, and you’d have to have half your brain cells missing if you didn’t see how much more derogatory it was of Bale – the monkey reference, for example, which probably went down well with fellow Arsenal fans – than Suarez and Noble.
The real issue is not, anyway, diving. It is cheating, and until the football authorities start really clamping down on it, we will be subjected to articles such as yours where, as I’ve already said, your main motive is to kick out at Spurs. It’s almost as if, reading between the lines, you even feel some resentment at our win at Old Trafford.
You tell me, truthfully, did you grin or were you as silent as a lamb when Ferguson said after that game that the referee adding only four minutes was a ‘disgrace’ to the game, yet the same manager said nothing about the Mendes’ ‘goal’ and Carrol’s cheating, or Carrick’s dive that gave them a penalty against us. Only a rotten, corrupt and hypocritical world bestows ‘honours’ on things like him.
cliffyboy – let’s take the word ‘crime’ as it has parrallels. Murdering someone is a crime, as is doing 22mph in a 20 zone – do both deserve the same criticism and punishment? If you view it as black and white then I pity you for lacking the ability to distinguish differences, but the rest of us understand and using that ability realise why Bale receives far more attention for his cheating than other players do – because he’s one of the worst in the league.
No-one is making any excuse for cheats, you’re putting all the supposition into the argument on your own, we’re explaining to you why it’s fine and not at all hypocritical for us to call Bale a cheat and how your logic is really awful. Just like how your complaint that he didn’t provide a comprehensive list of all cheats world wide and through-out history is really awful, stop getting pissy because he criticised a Spurs player after he cheated in a game THE DAY BEFORE and join us in reality, Bale is an awful cheat, one of the worst in the league, it just so happens he plays for Spurs but if he joins Arsenal in January the fact will remain: he’s a cheat and will be criticised every time he performs a high profile dive.
The only place the word ‘crime’ has parallels is in your head – your ‘analogy’ falls as flat as a pancake because I can’t call someone a crime but I can call him a cheat, they’re not even the same parts of speech, and it also needs the footballing authorities to state specificially that cheating is not permitted nor acceptable under any circumstances, and for that to be legally binding so that, for example, they would retrospectively have awarded Spurs a win when Mendes’ goal wasn’t given. You also do not see the irony of your attempted ‘analogy’. If going a few miles over the speed limit was seen as a crime in the same way as murder – ignoring the differences between civil and criminal law – any valid analogy with football would mean that stealing a few yards in your opponents’ half to take a throw-in, would result in a penalty being awarded to the other side. If that happened, would players still try to steal a few yards at throw-ins and who would speed?
You’ve got the gall to lable me Mr. Black and White, yet you won’t admit that only an Arsenal site would have written this article.
As I’ve already said, this article is not about cheating at all, it’s about having a dig at Bale and Spurs.
Civil and criminal law have nothing to do with drawing parallels between different levels of breaking the rules, you’re trying to argue that there is only one level of cheating and then getting pissy because someone called out Bale for exactly what he is, I’m disagreeing and illustrating to you how your argument is really daft but you’re still not understanding the point, infact you’re incredibly confused. This is what it boils down to: some cheats are simply worse than others, they do it with more regularity and to more extreme degrees with more sinister aims, hence the fact Suarez and Bale and others have gained a deserved reputation – this sentence doesn’t make excuses for any type of cheating or make claims that Arsenal have a clean record, it simply states the facts as they are, I’m sorry that makes you bitter.
I don’t deny that only an Arsenal site would write this article anywhere, once again you’re creating a strawman to battle against, I do deny however that only Arsenal fans would criticise Bale after his latest bout of diving because I see fans of other clubs do it too.
Argument won, the end, time to move on.
Can anyone join your fantasy world or is it only reserved for people who belong with the fairies?
Do you really think in your fevered imagination, that I’m bitter and incredibly confused?
If you wanted to think a little more seriously about the whole issue, it could even be possible to argue – and since you reckon there are different degrees of cheating, this should appeal to you – that the worst cheats are the sly ones, the Henrys of this world who like to appear whiter than white but who, as he did, can come badly unstuck when a camera catches them out, a bit like Maradona and his ‘hand of god’ gibberish, eh?
By all means make out that your beef with Bale has nothing to do with his being a Spurs player, but a person could easily argue that his ‘diving’ is so obvious that he must be lacking in brain cells to think he could get away with it.
Now Pires and Henry, well, they’re a different kettle of fish altogether, they’re so sly that it’s hard to catch them out.
So maybe you’re right, then, maybe there are different degrees of cheating, dorks like Bale and Suarez who wouldn’t fool a five year old, and your real cheats, like your two ‘heroes’ above, who fooled people left, right and centre, just like Carrick did against us at Old Trafford when he got them a penalty.
What, that nice Mr. Carrick a cheat, never.
Em, how quiet it’s suddenly become in the marble halls.
I’m not sure there’s anything left to argue about.
I wrote that Bale was a cheat. You didn’t deny that but you’re angry with me for saying it because this is an Arsenal site and in your words “you won’t admit that only an Arsenal site would have written this article.”
I beg to differ.
Here’s this from a Bristol Rovers site http://www.brfcforum.co.uk/index.php?/topic/105817-gareth-bale-cheat/
Or this from an Aston Villa fan on The Football Forum http://www.thefootballforum.net/index.php?/topic/214758-gareth-bale-is-the-biggest-cheat-in-the-premier-league/
This from a Liverpool site: http://forums.liverpoolfc.com/threads/313332-Gareth-Bale-is-the-biggest-CHEAT-in-modern-football
This from a Sunderland site: http://www.readytogo.net/smb/showthread.php?threadid=735864
This from a Scotland site: http://www.thefootyblog.net/2012/10/12/bale-is-a-brit-of-a-cheat/
And most amusingly of all this 31 page discussion about it on a Spurs site http://www.tottenhamhotspurs.tv/forum/players-lounge/30032-gareth-bales-diving.html
I’m not angry with you at all, far from it in fact. It’s the utter hypocrisy that motivates me.
You should have checked those sites you’ve attempted to cling to in support of your ‘argument’, if that’s what it can be called.
Your first one, the Bristol Rovers site, makes no mention of monkey, unlike yours.
The second, The Aston Villa one, also makes no mention of monkey and debates the issue so that some posts disagree with the hypothesis. No Arsenal fan on your site suuports Bale but there again, few of them support the use of literate English.
Your third, the Liverpool one – hardly objective – also debated the issue, unlike yours – and some admitted Adams’ culpability/lack of innocence.
Your fourth, the Sunderland reference, also debated the issue so some supported Bale.
Your fifth, the Scotland site, could hardly be called ‘objective’, since they’d just lost to Wales and no references on your part to the Scottish player’s admission.
Your sixth, a Spurs site, makes no reference to the monkey, but leads me to ask you directly for an equivalent Arsenal site that debates the cheating Henry and Pires, to name just two, for example.
If you really think those sites you quoted are as ‘objective’ as this thread of yours, you’re living in the same dream world as Misters ‘Cat Got Your Tongue’ Zinc, Justin P and Khalifa.
The issues here are not of clubs and individual players and the teams we all support, they are of cheating, pure and simple, which is why you’ve come unstuck. In actual fact, if you were really concerned about it, your focus wouldn’t even be on a player, it would be on the authorities who have allowed such cheating to occur for years now.
I notice, for example, you’ve not once picked up my reference to the Mendes goal. Tell me, any equivalent injustice in an Arsenal game you can recall, and I don’t just mean Wenger throwing a water bottle and flapping his arms about when things didn’t go his way?
Tell me, who do you think is the bigger cheat out of Bale and Scholes? That’s not a rhetorical question.
So wait… you’re not upset about me calling him a cheat, you’re upset about me saying he looks like a monkey? Is there nothing else on the internet that you could expend your energy getting worked up about?
And if that really is suddenly the issue then do you really need me to send you a list of links of other sites that have made that particular comparison? I’ll leave you to do a Google search. You can then barrage each and every one of them with complaints too.
As for the accusation that there’s ‘no debate’ on this site, that’s what the comments section is for. You’ve chosen not to debate the issue as to whether Bale’s a cheat (fair enough) but instead to go on and on about what an outrage it is that I mentioned that he’s a cheat in the first place (before just now changing your argument to being outraged that I said he looked like a monkey).
As for Zinc, Justin P and Khalifa not continuing this ludicrous debate, presumably they’ve said their piece and have now moved on with their lives. As should we.
What is it, a drowning man clutches at straw?
The issue of his being a cheat, in your eyes, was supposedly the only, real concern, but you couldn’t also help a snide reference in your other article to his looking like a monkey: just an ‘innocent’ aside on your part?
And you expect to be taken seriously?
My main concern or issue is not Bale at all, as any non-Arsenal fan would realise from my comments here, and nor his diving and your references to his looks – it is, for the umpteenth time, the blatant cheating that the footballing authorities are doing little or nothing about. Can you grasp that point? It’s hardly rocket science, well, except for those whose real motive is to kick Spurs and one of their players. And surprise, surprise, they also happen to be Arsenal fans. Well ,who would have believed that?
That’s why, when you ‘reply’ to my posts, you seize upon a minor point, but ignore the major questions. The bigger pictue eludes you because it is not cheating that you’re bothered about, it’s Spurs and one of their players.
Thus you ignored my last three paragraphs which contain the most important points I am trying to make, including my non-rhetorical questions about the Mendes goal and Bale and Scholes – guess they belong in the too-hard basket.
And neither do I think the three ‘hit and runners’, Zinc, Justin P and Khalifa have ‘said their piece and have now moved on’, well, not unless you interpret treading water in a stagnant pool of anti-Spurs certainty as ‘moving on’.
I’ll ask you again: who’s the bigger cheat, Bale or Scholes?
“Cliffyboy43 on October 13th, 2012 10:58 pm
The only reason I posted was your reference to a Spurs player and your calling him a cheat.”
Confront that with:
“Cliffyboy43 on October 14th, 2012 10:27 am
The trouble with you, Khalifha, is that you love your team before you love the sport.”
As far as I can see, with you Spurs come first, then the sport.
“The trouble with a crap article like this one, is that it leaves the author wide open if his own team has never had such players.”
According to this line of argument, Germans don’t have any right to condemn any crimes against humanity because of Hitler.
“And would the author have written a similar article on Ashley Young and United?”
As far as I recall, this site includes several articles on players from different clubs cheating. (And several anti-ManU pieces… boy, where are you from??)
Bale’s prominence CLEARLY results from two things:
a) he’s a Spurs player,
b) he recently dived against Arsenal and won a penalty thereby.
I really can’t see why an Arsenal fan blog can’t present reality from an Arsenal perspective, and that would typically involve more or less snide remarks about Spurs. And Spurs’ current star is Bale. Who’s known for diving. Did you see marble calling Spurs a “divers’ club”? Or a “team of cheats”? Provide relevant quotes, please.
You seem to be mixing two different arguments – one about punishing EVERY cheat in the same way, another about treating ALL rival teams with equal respect. Neither really makes sense. You can’t disqualify a player for moving the ball a foot or two ahead of the right spot for a spot kick. Henry’s 2009 handball, the only such event I can recall right now, merited a punishment; so do all of Bale’s dives. And believe me, he dives in (nearly?) every game. The only thing that distinguishes him from Suarez is that Suarez rarely wins anything by his dives. In my eyes, this actually makes Bale the worse.
As for treating everyone the same – that’s being ahistorical. Arsenal and Spurs have a history, and this is also what makes their games so special. You want to leave that behind?
And I’m sorry about that, man, but Bale does have a monkey-ish look about him.
Your logic is as feeble as your either/or
‘reply’. This article was clearly written to get at Spurs, Bale and their fans.
I don’t see anything the slightest illogical in arguing that being concerned only with a player of your traditional rivals suggests you love your club before your sport. Why that’s supposedly true of me exists only in your imagination, since I have not once defended Bale.
Surely it should be cheating per se that’s the issue, don’t you agree, well, unless you want utter hypocrisy to rear its ugly head? Hush my mouth, child, don’t forget that this club set a great record, and with a great couple of cheats in the side.
Whoop, Jug! I love thee!
And in an earlier post here I mentioned a player called Dyson, Terry Dyson, in fact, who was a member of Tottenham’s great double side, and I always disliked him because I felt he was a cheat.
And with your last rationalisation, are you really saying that because Bale has something resembling a monkey in his physiognomy, that somehow justifies using such terminology to describe him thus?
Gareth Bale looks like a monkey and dives like a pro. He irks a lot of people, who are not shy of taking a dig at him wherever that’s possible. If it’s his face, so be it. I don’t think “Bale is a monkey” is “justified terminology,” but neither is it a point that invalidates anyone’s argument. We’re not talking PM’s speech, we’re talking blog entry.
Boy, oh boy, you’re still going strong, I see. Can you name a player from the CURRENT Arsenal side who repeatedly dives? Because the point of the article is that a Spurs player named Bale does that. Not that he’s the only one. Not that Arsenal players NEVER do that. but that HE DOES THAT. Now, it’s true Suarez is a diver; we’ve seen Young dive his ass off several times. But the truth is, neither of them is as consistent a performer as Bale.
That’s my “feeble logic” of a “child” who speaks “illiterate English” in his “‘replies.’”
Your reasoning about the logic represented in marble’s argument looks slightly different – in fact, it doesn’t look like logic at all.
According to your reasoning, when an Arsenal fan criticizes a Tottenham player of cheating, he thereby claims no Arsenal player cheats or has ever cheated since God Almighty. When I say Bale cheats, it necessarily means that I’m pure as the driven snow. When I say this Tottenham player cheats, I thereby acknowledge that no one else does it, and that I condone the cheating performed by others, because I’m so bent against that one lad.
If you’re worried by the fact that you get so few responses from some of the regular posters here, I guess this might be one reason. The only counterarguments you can muster are dated and can’t invalidate the point. 1919? Henry and Pires? Terry Dyson? Sorry mate, but this isn’t a history class on cheating. It’s an article that tells, among other things, about someone who plays football here and now and cheats like crazy, and in fact has just cheated in the game that happened a day before. Now, excuse me if Arsenal have just yesterday cheated in 1919, or if Henry and Pires collectively dived while playing for Arsenal last night, or even if Terry Dyson has resumed his career after 40 odd years to dive in a game just now. I must have missed that.
No, too true it’s not a history class on cheating, it’s not even a contemporary article on cheating.
For the umpteenth time, it’s an article that simply highlights Spurs and one of their players, while pretending it examines diving.
Any true lover of football, and any sport for that matter – cycling, for example, which I also very much like – will condemn cheating in any way, shape or form, and the history of it, as well as the physical features of an individual are as irrelevant as the illiterate replies from so many Arsenal fans on this post.
You say, ironically, ‘I must have missed that.’
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Hmmm, you have a strange way of reading.
Let me give you a breakdown:
Par. 1-4: comments on England’s game against San Marino (with special focus on Walcott’s injury);
Par. 5-7: comment on the Wales-Scotland game plus a personal assault on Gareth Bale (Spurs are mentioned ONCE, in passing);
Par. 8: brief evaluation of other Arsenal internationals’ performances;
Par. 9-10: a discussion of the Chamakh situation.
It’s beyond me how you can construe this piece as “an article that simply highlights Spurs and one of their players, while pretending it examines diving.” It is nothing of the sort. It mentions diving SOLELY in relation to Bale as a player in general (with examples of his dives for country and club, one apiece). It mentions Spurs SOLELY in relation to Bale, and, in fact, does it only once.
Do reread the piece in its entirety, and not just the 30% of it that refer to Bale.
PS. I also think if you reviewed the comments above, it might turn out the “so many Arsenal fans” are actually mostly disgruntled Spurs fans, who, like you, missed 70% of the piece and largely misread the rest.
What is it, just a mental block on your part or a wilful refusal to face facts?
Oviously, I’m not going to comment on the paragraphs that don’t refer to Bale and his diving – and is at all possible for you to widen your ‘vision’ and ‘analysis’ of the issue, as I’ve frequently asked, so that diving is not looked at in isolation but is seen for what it is cheating, pure and simple? Cheating is not an example of diving – it is the other way round – and anyone seriously concerned about cheating would focus directly and squarely on that.
Your reply here drips with unconscious irony – you trumpet how this article’s first four paragraphs talk of England’s game against Marino and Walott’s injury, with the only paragraphs mentioning Bale being 5-7, and with the final three paragraphs focusing on Arsenal, stating ‘do reread the piece in its entirety, and not just the 30% of it that refer(s?) to Bale.’
Odd, then, don’t you think, that the first three Headline-catching words in red capitals are, you’ve guessed it, folks: ‘BALE CHEATS AGAIN’.
Shakespeare called it being hoisted on your own petard. You might want to look it up.