Re: Discipline (From Gary's twitter feed)

By Hendonboy31/8/2015 12:24Mon Aug 31 12:24:07 2015In response to Re: Discipline (From Gary's twitter feed)

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To be honest Paul, I've no personally interest in whether red or yellow cards are shown too lightly these days or not, I'm bothered by the fact that of our 4 goalscorers so far season, two have already picked up entirely unnecessary 3 match bans for afters (in one case after he'd already been awarded a free kick!) while another is already (still in August!) about to pick up a ban for gobbing off at the referee over and over again. As others have said, it's all so horribly avoidable.

I cannot for the life of me see how any of that is a necessary part of a title winning side. Hard or mistimed tackles that earn a yellow? Fine. Last man taking someone out "for the team"? Not exactly my cup of tea, but understandable. Getting "in the ref's ear"? Everyone does it these days. I don't like it, but understand why a few quiet words can help the cause. Retaliation or swearing at the ref? Sorry, but it's not helpful, and needs cutting out.

Like it or not, over the last year or so, we've obviously got worse at this. Not to the extent that Maidstone fans were whining about - I largely agree with you that they just didn't like losing to a side who on paper have no rights to be near them - but to a point where we're starting to lose important players entirely unnecessarily. I'll happily stand up and defend our overall disciplinary record last season - we played more games than anyone else, so it's unsurprising we picked up the second most cautions/red cards... once you averaged them out per game we finished bang mid-table, but at the moment we're on course to top it quite comfortably and we don't have the depth in our squad to handle the consequences or the finances to deal with the inevitable FA fine if this continues.

As with others, I'm going to bite my tongue on the Maclarens. It's one for another day as far as I'm concerned. As with John R further up, I've a lot of misgivings about the whole thing and if as Simon says the club is still going through it's disciplinary process then now probably isn't the time for me to air any of them.