Tuesday, April 19

Time to end wrestling in the box?

One thing Jonathan Moss got right at Leicester was awarding West Ham a penalty for Morgan's pulling of Winston Reid. Every corner saw a tremendous amount of grappling in the box and Moss clearly gave the penalty because, even though such holding happens all the time, he had specifically warned Huth, Morgan and co seconds before. 

West Ham could have been penalised at times too. In some ways it was encouraging to watch Angelo Ogbonna match Huth in the dark arts of holding and tugging (he did learn his trade in Italy after all) as West Ham were clearly not going to be intimidated by Robert Huth's gamesmanship. But on a couple of occasions Ogbonna too could have given away a penalty, particularly when he held down Huth in added time. 

Apparently there was much less pulling going on at the Stoke v Spurs game last night after the publicity Moss's decision received, so perhaps at the start of next season the FA should insist that any player holding at a corner will concede a penalty. Once three or four penalties are awarded in a game the defenders would surely stop and we'd see a fair jumping contest between attackers and defenders rather than WWE wrestling. 

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