What a surprise to find that a British police force aren’t at all concerned with investigating further a violent assault that could have seriously injured or even killed the victim simply because he’s such a good bloke that he has asked them not to pursue it further.

Whether Pedro Mendes wants the attack by Ben Thatcher dealt with by the FA or not it should be a police decision to prosecute and in my opinion jail Thatcher for his deliberate act of grievious bodily harm on the Portsmouth midfielder regardless of what minor punishments the FA and Manchester City have dealt out.

A few games suspension and the loss of a few weeks wages will teach a lifelong thug like ben Thatcher absolutely nothing and I am disgusted to once again see one rule for thugs on the street and quite another for multi-millionaires just because they carry out their offences on a football pitch and not on the street outside a pub.

The Scottish authorities dealt with Duncan Ferguson in a tough manner and subjected him to a spell in Barlinnie Prison for a similarly sickening assault so why can’t Greater Manchester Police do the same?

Answer: lack of bottle to really punish a person who may bring some negative publicity on their force from his apologists in the football world.

Leaving the decision to Pedro Mendes smacks of passing the buck when they knew fine rightly that he couldn’t expect to testify against a fellow professional footballer and continue to work in this country.

Spineless and inept and I thought these adjectives should only be applied to those who directly run football.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Manchester City. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.