Wigan's Martinez says McManaman has unfairly suffered.

I don't think he meant to do it but that does not for one second take away how bad a tackle that was, I am shocked that FOUR officials did not see it and was even more shocked when the FA decided not to take action, hence they thought the tackle was fine. I don't believe you can really compare it to the Nani incident because the ref in that game was from a country where teams don't tackle as hard as we do over here.

 

The media and people generally overreact about these kind of happenings. I think everyone should take it easier on the boy, a ban is needed and he will have learned his lesson till the end of the ban.

 

Well, it looked a bad challenge for sure but, giving him the benefit of the doubt, not sure that there was any real malice in it. Difficult these days, thinking back to when I played this type of challenge was not uncommon, I think the whole game was more physical, what with slide tackles being run of the mill and tackling from behind wasn't thought of particularly as a bad challenge. One thing that wasn't around when I played was all this shirt pulling and hands all over the place. Thats a side of the game nowadays that really tees me off!

 

Absolutely, it was a clumsy tackle, if you look at it again you will notice the lad wasn't going in to hurt him, he was just doing what a lot of inexperienced defenders do. There is no ban as the FA have not deemed it severe enough, I'm assuming because the Newcastle player is not as badly injured as he could have been.