John Terry Deserved His Red Card

As expected, John Terry has appealed against the red card he received at the weekend in "The Clash of the Cash" v Manchester City.

But what grounds does he have? Well, I don't think he has any.

As Jo raced through, he got past John Terry with relative ease, but then, Terry brought him down with a tackle that would be more suited to a rugby field. Although I think Jo went down incredibly easily (it should take more than a tame arm across your stomach to bring you down), I still think Terry deserved his red card.

He knew the player was past him, and so cynically brought him down. It's the type of thing you do in a kick-a-bout at the park when you can't take it that someone has just beaten you.

The main argument in Terry's favor is that Jo was over 40 yards from goal, and Ricardo Carvalho was behind him. This doesn't wash with me. Why should John Terry get away with blatant cheating just because there is another player behind him?

A purposeful, obvious foul like that should, in my view, be at least a yellow card card every time, and definitely a red when the striker is in with a good chance of going on to score.

The same went for Nemanja Vidic against Liverpool. His foul as last man deserved a red card on it's own, but he was allowed to stay on the field, albeit to eventually leave following an elbow on Xabi Alonso, a challenge, again, deserving of a red card on it's own.

However, if John Terry didn't deserve a red card for his challenge, his harassment of the referee afterwards would have warranted the required second yellow. Terry and four or five Chelsea players gathered around the referee and pleaded Terry's innocence, paying no attention to the "Respect" initiative.

John Terry himself took over a minute to leave the field.

By far the worst incident of this weekend, however, was Danny Guthrie's tackle on Craig Fagan. I never had Guthrie down as a "thuggish" character, but that tackle is exactly that - thuggish. He should be banned for at least 6 games.

As I said earlier about intentional and obvious fouls being red cards, this foul was the worst of the three. As a result of Guthrie's vicious assault on Fagan, the Hull player now has a broken leg, and will be out for at least three months.

Anyway, back to John Terry. If his appeal is unsuccessful, he will miss Chelsea's next three Premier League matches, including next weekend's huge match against Manchester United, who will, of course, be without Vidic.

John Terry only has himself to blame. For the past couple of years Terry has been one of the biggest cheats in football. But he is one of the best cheats, and that is a compliment. I believe it's not cheating if the ref doesn't see it. But this time, Terry finally got caught, and has to deal with the consequences.