Former QPR skyscraper Peter Crouch, red-carded in Wednesday’s Worthless Cup defeat to Chelsea, delivered his biggest PR blunder since a sloppy drum & bass debut, as recapped by The Times’ Matt Hughes.
As an intelligent young man, Peter Crouch does not make a habit of attempting to defend the indefensible, but he did his damnedest yesterday. In trying to exonerate himself in the wake of his sending-off in Liverpool™s Carling Cup defeat away to Chelsea on Wednesday evening, he hit back at John Obi Mikel, accusing the Nigeria midfield player of acting as if he had œbeen shot after the forward™s two-footed challenge.
œWhat I™m thinking is, if you go in on Frank Lampard or John Terry, would they roll around like Obi Mikel did? Crouch said. œI don™t think they would have done. Would someone like Carra [Jamie Carragher] have gone down like that? I think it™s safe to say that he wouldn™t.
œForeign players have brought a lot to our game, but that™s something you don™t want to see. I didn™t catch him, but he™s gone down like he™s been shot. It™s frustrating because I thought we played OK as a team and, obviously, it was always going to be difficult from the moment I was sent off.
For such a mild-mannered individual, it is curious that Crouch has been sent off four times in his career, with his lunge on Mikel earning him the nickname œBaddy Long Legs in some quarters. The Liverpool striker accepts that he was in the wrong, but insists that Martin Atkinson, the referee, should have acted earlier after a series of fouls by Mikel.
œMikel came in with his studs up and that was in the back of my mind, Crouch said. œThen I thought there was another foul in there and, obviously, I™ve lost my head. There are no excuses for the tackle I made, but if the referee had pulled the foul up when he should have done, it wouldn™t have happened. A lot was going their way and I think frustration got the better of me.
I used to sit next to a fellow at QPR who went absolutely nuts each time Wycombe visited Loftus Road. Whenever Lawrie Sanchez would leave his feet to speak to a player, argue with a referee, etc., my neighbor would be on the brink of a heart attack, bellowing “SIT DOWN, SANCHEZ, YOU FUCKING PERVERT!”.
Though I never learned what that was all about, Sanchez’ dismissal today from Fulham should give the former Northern Ireland manager plenty of time to mend fences with his more vocal critics in West London.