Birmingham manager Alex McLeish believes that the injury suffered by Arsenal striker Eduardo against the Blues was a factor in his side’s relegation from the Premier League.
It was a Saturday lunchtime in late February when the fateful moment took place at St Andrews, with Eduardo going down after just three minutes of the match under a tackle from Blues defender Martin Taylor.
All sorts of mayhem followed, with Gunners manager Arsene Wenger immediately calling for Taylor to be banned from football for life, a comment he later retracted after studying video evidence.
This took nothing away from the severity of the injury to the Brazilian-born Croatia international - who will miss this month’s Euro 2008 tournament as a result.
He suffered a broken left fibula and an open dislocation of his left ankle and openly credits Arsenal physio Gary Lewin’s quick thinking for saving his foot. That said, he may be fit for the start of next season.
Taylor got a three match ban after a straight red card and McLeish believes when he returned the experience had clearly had an effect.
If the incident cost Arsenal the title, the Blues boss insists it must be counted as one of the reasons they will be playing Championship football next term.
He said: “It was a factor here at Birmingham City, absolutely. Martin Taylor had played very solidly for a few games in the Premier League.
“He was affected as much as Arsenal were and we were affected by losing him.
“When he came back I didn’t think Taylor was quite himself. He played against Wigan and it wasn’t the Martin who had been playing before the Eduardo incident.
“Our other centre-half, Liam Ridgewell, must have played with five different partners last season. The one thing you see with the good teams, like Manchester United, is that their back four is pretty much the same.”
8 Comments
He should blame the person who is on record as telling his players to “Get stuck in to them” before the match.
The persons name was Alex McLeish.
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Sorry Eduardo will not be fit for the beginning of the new season - more like October time.
Like a lot of people have already said I think the injury did cost The Arsenal the title.
The look on Cesc & Alex’s face said it all and it took a while for the players to get over seeing that injury. In the meantime they dropped loads of points due to the same old referring decisions.
So please don’t be blaming the affect it had on Taylor for Brum getting relegated, one person doesn’t make a team and that’s a heavy load to put on him.
What I personally cant get over is the look on the faces of Cesc and Alex…I only watched it on TV and it made me feel physically sick.
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Poor old Birmingham, and poor Martin Taylor, still the real victims in all of this, of course. Well done to Alex McLeish for stopping himself from blaming that nasty bully Arsene Wenger. It was all his fault after all.
I didn’t mind Birmingham before all this happened, but they’ve handled the whole situation terribly, and they’re still playing the victim. I almost feel like laughing. Good riddance to them and their caveman football.
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I think it cost Arsenal a lot more than Birmingham…..at least they still had the player to put out on the field.
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Sorry but you can’t blame edwardo’s injury on the fact that you were relegated! You were relegated because you were not good enough! nuf said!
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What McLeish means is that telling his players to give more skillful opponents a good kicking at the start of a match backfired on him.
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TonyS, you are so right.
That was thuggish behaviour
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With such mentality, it is no surprise why in this world there is a lot of conflict and wars.
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