BBC SPORT | Football | Premiership | Man City 0-0 Portsmouth

Manchester City earned their first point of the season in a match marred
by a disgraceful challenge by Ben Thatcher on Portsmouth’s Pedro Mendes.

In what turned out to be a mediocre match, the only noteworthy moment turned
out to be a disgraceful challenge by Ben Thatcher on Pedro Medes. On viewing
the reply you can clearly see Thatcher raise his hand towards the face of Mendes
resulting in the Portsmouth playing appearing to collapse to the ground unconscious
before sliding into the advertising hoarding.
Now whilst I can understand the reaction of Harry Redknapp and many of the
fans, and although being a Pompey fan myself, I don’t think Ben Thatcher intended
to hurt Mendes. Having watched Ben Thatcher over the past few years, I think
it was more of a dangerous tackle that he is prone to committing once in a
while, but in no way am I condoning what he did. The F.A. needs to review the
tackle and take the appropriate action before Thatcher ends up seriously injuring
another player. If he could remove that element from his game, he would be
a better player for it. No doubt Thatcher is remorseful for what he did, but
the fact remains he could have seriously injured Mendes and needs to sort himself
out as soon as possible. When you go into tackles at 110%, you have to be perfectly
sure you make the tackle or it could be a career ending move for the other
player.

Hopefully Mendes will be back in action as soon as possible. I still believe
his goals towards the latter part of last season were instrumental in helping
Pompey avoid the drop

BBC
SPORT | Football | My Club | Man City | Thatcher faces FA & police probes

The Football Association and Greater Manchester Police are to launch investigations
into Ben Thatcher’s challenge on Portsmouth’s Pedro Mendes.