I have always respected Stuart Pearce, first as a no-nonsense defender for Nottingham Forest and England (when Spurs had Justin Edinburgh at left back during that time I came to appreciate a quality fullback) and then as an energetic manager with some of Martin O’Neill’s traits of kicking every ball he watched from the touchline. That respect ended after watching Pearce vindicate Ben Thatcher for the GBH he had just inflicted on Pedro Mendes and say, with a smirk, that the referee had been right to issue a yellow card.

IfI was the Manchester City chairman I’d tell Pearce that he had one day to do an interview with Sky Sports on camera and make a very public aplogy for his flippant remarks and a couple of hours in which to tell Ben Thatcher to pack up his stuff and never come back to City. Pearce should have known better.

Thatcher on the other hand has always been a loathsome thug. An overrated youngster at Millwall and then Wimbledon led to a big money (waste of money) move to Spurs where he spent more time on the treatment table than the pitch (thankfully given his awful performances) and was then shipped on. He’s a paper thug, a snidey dirty individual with no redeeming football features and last night’s assault on Mendes proves that beyond all doubt.

Thatcher knew exactly what he was doing when he assaulted Mendes, it wasn’t a challenge, it was an assault and he’s very lucky that he didn’t kill Pedro Mendes. On street corners all around the UK there are fights which result in worse consequences from lesser blows than that and it’s about time that the police stepped in and charged Ben Thatcher with GBH. Duncan Ferguson did jail time in Barlinnie for headbutting John McStay of Raith Rovers and rightly so. The English police need to take a firm hand over the Thatcher incident and put him away for a few months.

We send our best wishes to Pedro Mendes and hope for a speedy recovery and our scorn and disgust to Manchester City’s manager and especially their fullback who deserves to never walk onto a football pitch again.

There is no place for that in the game or in society in general. I don’t want to hear about the FA’s hands being tied, the police’s hands aren’t tied and they are the ones to deal with this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 8:42 am and is filed under Manchester City. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.