Bendtner Saves Arsenal Against Hull City: Remove Tackling in Football?

I didn´t get to see the match this weekend.

I was in Sunny Marbella, on a wonderful artificial football pitch, cut into the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley, with a spectacular view of white Spanish houses, and lush green forest.

It was the perfect setting for a Gaelic football tournament, and the fact that Valencia GAA CF all of its competition and I went home with the MVP (perhaps the first Canadian MVP of a GAA tournament in the history of the world) was an absolutely glorious feeling.

It only got more glorious when I found out that Arsenal had managed a last minute win against Hull Sh**ty, and my favorite player in the world the B-52 bomber had scored the winner.

I think Wenger was right when he said that young strikers need to have games like the ones against Burnley. One might say that without making mistakes you can't ever learn anything because you cannot what is right unless you know what is wrong. Perhaps that is a bit extreme, but Bendtner has now scored in five of his last six games, bagging a hat-trick against Porto midweek. A respectable tally of seven in six.

People talk about his first touch, people talk about his clumsiness, people talk about his late release of the ball. Whatever. He´s 22 and he's banging in goals right now. He´s also very tall, very strong, very fast, and very confident, all of which are excellent attributes for any up-and-coming striker.

I remember theonewhosenameshallnotbespoken having similar attributes and telling my friends that our former number 25 would make an impact on the team.

Bendtner will do the same.

Now I didn't see the match so I don't know how well he played overall, but most of our team were sixes and sevens in the Guardian and he got an eight, and I don't think it's because he sidefooted a rebound in the 93rd minute.

I also like the way that he's speaking to the media sticking up for his team against George Boateng's horrendous challenge on Bacary Sagna. LINK . I'm disappointed that Phil Brown even brought up Sol Campbell's hard challenge in the second half, because it seemed to get more coverage than Boateng's genuine attempt to put Sagna out of the World Cup.

That kind of kick is only seen in Jean Claude van Damme movies, where he smashes the guys knee and you hear the most terrible ligament snapping, bone crushing noise. It was straight out of a kung fu flick. No place in football.

Whereas Campbell, won the ball, and unfortunately he's man toppled over as a consequence. It wasn't studs up. It wasn't overly aggressive. It was a good hard tackle, and not something which should ever be compared to or mentioned in the same sentence as the Boateng or Shawcross tackle.

Fair play to Arsenal, we shouldn't be needing to beat Hull in the last minute, because Hull are shit and we are class. However, at the end of the day the league table doesn't take into account when or how you scored your goals, just if you ended up winning the game, or not.

Chelsea and United both won by three goals this weekend, which makes a bit of a difference in the goal difference race, but realistically nobody expected West Ham or Fulham to take points of the big boys this weekend.

More to follow later in the week. I hope everyone has their Inter Milan tops on for this week's mid-week clash between Mourinho and his former Club. Oh...and Mourinho's current players.