Tiny tales

By Colin Tattum on Mar 20, 08 09:48 PM

If Sepp Blatter was picking a fantasy football team, you would think Martin Taylor would be included.

The FIFA president seems obsessed by the Blues centre-half.

Not that he's probably ever seen him play, or checked his character.

All Blatter has done is put Taylor forward as his latest cause celebre, a convenient kicking post.

Blatter would have you believe that he's on a crusade to clean up football and protect talented players.

Had he waited and not jumped on the bangwagon that Arsene Wenger first propelled, he might
have found much better subject matter.

Claude Makelele for example, his tackle at West Ham was delightful.

Wayne Rooney perhaps, you can't coach his demonic lunge at Niko Kranjcar.

Ashley Cole's 'we have lift off' challenge on Alan Hutton. Nice.

Hey, even Nicky Butt might have caught Sepp's eye with his hack of Sebastian Larsson's knee.

Taylor is an unassuming, studious chap. He's not a thug. He's shown his compassion for

Eduardo, but he has nothing to apologise for.

Taylor and his wife have spent a great deal of time replying personally to emails of support that flooded in for him.

He has drawn great strength from people from all walks of life relating similar experiences, many of them a lot worse and certainly humbling.

Taylor made his comeback for Blues reserves and media who wouldn't know their Solihull

Moors from their Roger Moores turned up on Tuesday no doubt to see if he would kick someone and break their leg.

Two national newspapers had cleared their back pages in readiness of such.

A story appeared today that FIFA had asked the FA to reconsider their stance not to analyse Taylor's challenge and extend his suspension.

It turned out that that wasn't quite right but the FA would not have been interested anyway.

They won't admit it publicly, but take it from me that they have been dismayed by Blatter's meddling and feel Taylor, like most rational people outside north west London, was not malicious.

And if they had wanted to, they would have got involved. They did so when Ben Thatcher horrifically took out Pedro Mendes.

Alex McLeish, asked at his latest media conference for his view for the umpteenth time, summed it up succinctly: "If FIFA still want to the FA to review it, then they'll have to review a thousand other tackles."