Dave Pundit on Diouf

Hi, I'm Dave Pundit. Many people have been condemning Diouf's tackle on Manuel Almunia in the Arsenal v Blackburn game yesterday. I feel it's time to set the record straight. Firstly we have to realise that Diouf is foreign, the English game doesn't come naturally to him, but he launched himself into that challenge as if he'd been born and bred in good old blighty. It'd bring a tear to my I if I wasn't so damn rugged.

Secondly we have to think about who he was tackling. Manuel Almunia. Arsenal's keeper. Now in my day keeper's were fair game. You could elbow them in the face, bundle them over the line or leap in from 10 feet away with no chance of getting the ball and it was all perfectly acceptable. Nowadays however goalkeepers get far too much protection, the slightest foul and they get a freekick. The simple fact is that Diouf was just playing a good old fashioned style of football whereas Almunia was running around outside his area as if he was a fullback.

In my eyes if Almunia is going to go around acting like a proper footballer instead of a goalkeeper he should expect to get tackled like a real footballer. So let's hear it for Diouf for his attempts to fit into the British game and let's stop sympathising with a Spanish keeper who is under the deluded belief, common amongst Arsenal players, that people come to matches to see football being played.