Commentator posts images highlighting Dark Arts by Soton player in clash v Leeds
CBN Football commentator Gabriel Dudziak has highlighted an interesting passage of play early on in the game between Leeds United and Southampton on Tuesday night.
In a post that was retweeted by Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Graham Smyth he said, “Don’t know if you guys saw it yesterday, but Southampton first chance of the match was created by an armlock from Bednarek on Struijk. He can’t run with Vestergaard because his arm is stuck there.”
He posted two images of Struijk caught in an armlock and unable to move with Jannik Vestergaard moving for the ball.
On the Sky Sports commentary, Andy Hinchcliffe accused Struijk of losing his man.
On the Sky Sports app it was said, “Struijk, who was man-marking him, can count his lucky stars”.
Southampton plenty nasty enough
Struijk didn’t complain at the time and we doubt that VAR would have flagged it up as a foul if the goal had been scored, even though Bednarek was making no attempt to play the ball and only to stop our man getting to it.
However, the image exonerates Struijk of any blame in the incident which, in real-time, we just put down to more sloppy defending from set-pieces.
It shows the Dark Arts that defenders have to put up with when defending set-pieces.
And it also shows that Ralph Hassenhutl might want to rethink his assessment of the game when he said that his side needed to be more like “nasty” Leeds.
Add the incident above to the blatant dive from Nathan Tella and you’ve got a side that’s plenty nasty enough for our liking.
We think Hassenhutl needs to remind his players to concentrate more on playing football and less on trying to win by nefarious means.
In other Leeds United news, Alan Shearer puts ‘superb’ Raphinha and Bamford in Team of the Week