Sore One

The injury sustained by Eduardo as a result of Martin Taylor's flying tackle in Saturday's Birmingham v Arsenal match is amongst the worst I've ever seen in all my years of watching football.

Having seen the incident in slow motion on Match Of The Day, I don't think the tackle was intentionally malicious - Taylor was simply beaten by a much faster, much more skilfull player.

I broke a fellow youngster's ankle with a tackle when I was only 10 or 11, and it's one of the most sickening feelings in the world, knowing that your own clumsiness or overzealous tackling has screwed up someone's leg for at least a couple of months.

Thankfully, the injury I inflicted on my opponent wasn't as serious as that picked up by Eduardo, whose leg is broken in three places and who will now miss the rest of the season and the European Championships.

He is, however, lucky that he doesn't play in the Scottish pub leagues - he'd have been called a poof and told to run it off.