By Ollie Irish
“Not the hair!”
I know Bob Savage has accrued plenty of ‘He had it coming’ points throughout his career, but even he didn’t deserve to be on the end of this shocking ‘tackle’ – which is more of a two-footed assault than a tackle – by Swansea City forward Gorka Pintado:
Happily, Savage walked away – gingerly – and then had this to say about Pintado’s blood-rush, which caused a bit of a scrum between Derby and Swansea’s players:
“That was a career-ending tackle. It was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s a good job I used my experience to get out of the way. If I hadn’t done that I would have had a broken leg and that would have ended my career.
“He should get banned for more than three games for that. I play on the edge but that was terrible. He knew he had to go. If the guy hadn’t lunged from 40 yards, two-footed and thigh-high, that [melee] wouldn’t have happened. Most people will be glad it was on me. But what I want to see, as captain, is all my teammates coming in and sticking up for me.”
A 40-yard lunge is of course a huge and enjoyable exaggeration but I agree that a three-game ban is not enough for Pintado. Five games seems fair. Unless you’re kneejerky BBC pundit Steve Claridge (a former team-mate of Savage), who judged that a ban of “three or four months” (!) would fit the crime. A bit over the top, Steve. Much like Pintado, then.
What punishment do YOU think Pintado deserves?