Samuel And The Dingles

I wondered how long it would take Martin Samuel to offer his pearls of wisdom on the Ian Hulme injury. After all West Ham has been on the backfoot in recent weeks so here was a golden opportunity to hijack an accidental football injury and use it to sling some more mud at Sheffield United.

Samuel is very good at cherry picking he highlights Morgan’s dig on Van Persie but then he conveniently fails to mention the two incidents where Morgan was on the receiving end. A deliberate elbow from Aston Villa’s Juan Pablo Angel went unpunished as did a punch in the face from Wigan’s Lee McCulloch. As far as the McCulloch incident goes, can you imagine the uproar if the roles had been reversed? Morgan would have been in strangeways within 24 hours of the end of the match.

The hilarious thing about this latest slice of anti Sheffield United propaganda is how he attempts to compare the Hulme injury with West Ham’s cheating and dishonesty over Tevez. He talks about the character of Morgan but they have a few players at West Ham with questionable character whether it is beating students up on the streets of Leeds or attacking a team mate with a golf club.

As for the dingles their fans have always worn huge chips on their shoulders where Sheffield United is concerned. It is a classic case of small man syndrome as well as an annoyance at losing your best players to your local rivals. If the incident had involved Matt Kilgallon instead of former Oakwell favourite Morgan the protest would not have been anywhere near as vociferous. They were already sulking after throwing their toys out of the pram over the Brian Howard transfer.

In the past week Graham Poll suggested the footage must make Andy D’Urso cringe and after his embarrassing World Cup display in 2006 Poll should know all about cringe worthy performances. The latest person to speak is Hulme’s brother who called for a lifetime ban and compared the incident to the Ben Thatcher attack on Pedro Mendes even though it was nothing like it. Next week we might have Hulme’s postman calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty.

No doubt the London based media led by Samuel will continue to give this smear campaign every encouragement.

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