Chelsea reactions: Terry is sacrosanct; Pizarro is a punk

By: Lucas | December 10th, 2007

In the dying minutes of Sunderland’s 2-0 loss to Chelsea last Saturday, Liam Miller made a rash tackle on John Terry. The two fell in a heap, and when they got up Terry was in Miller’s face, giving him an earful. As Miller walked away, Chelsea substitute Claudio Pizarro pulled a classless punk move: having had nothing to do with the foul (which Roy Keane described as “obviously a foul but that was it”) or the subsequent brief confrontation, Pizarro attempted to knee Miller in the groin. When Miller reacted by shoving Pizarro in the face, the red card came out and it was a classic case of the guy hitting second who gets punished.

Keane was understandably pissed off about it, and let it be known in his post-match comments. “Clearly you’re not allowed to tackle the England captain…the reaction from John Terry and Pizarro disappointed me.” Keane, obviously aware of the irony of complaining about his man being sent off for throwing a sort of punch, continued, “Once you raise your hands, and I have been known to do it myself, you give the referee a decision to make but I thought it could have been avoided. There was certainly an over-reaction from Chelsea players to the tackle by Liam, there’s no getting away from that.”

Sunderland captain Dean Whitehead is pragmatic about the loss: “Few teams are given many chances at Chelsea and we had a mountain to climb. We have to take it on the chin and move on. We have played the top three teams [Chelsea, Arsenal & Man Utd.] away from home now and they are very hard games out of the way.”

Indeed, Sunderland have not played poorly against the top teams, but have struggled mightily at times this season (particularly away against Wigan and Everton). It does make one feel a little optimistic to have three of your toughest road contests already played before Christmas; but in the Premiership there are no “easy” games, as Aston Villa make a visit to the Stadium of Light this weekend.

“That is the Premier League for you,” said Whitehead. “It is the challenge we wanted and it is up to everyone to step up to the mark now.”