At first I thought Jose Mourinho was overreacting, and of course I knew immediately that his line about Petr Cech being “lucky” was the one the press would zero in on. Whether Mourinho knew, at the time of the interview, that Cech had a fractured skull I couldn’t say. It was a good two hours after the collision, Cech was already in hospital, so it’s not impossible Mourinho knew how serious the injury was – or at least how serious it was likely to be. Of course Mourinho is no stranger to giving a slanted view if he thinks it will help Chelsea (Frisk, Cole, Messi, the Fat Bloke who manages Liverpool), but we’d already beaten Reading, the points were ours. This wasn’t game playing, Mourinho was simply furious at what he’d seen Stephen Hunt do.
To begin with I wasn’t as angry as Mourinho, my initial reaction was that the challenge on Carlo Cudicini was worse. At first look I thought the guy had blatantly body checked our keeper, and had done so deliberately. Seeing the incident replayed it was clear the Reading player had his eyes shut and although he was careless it wasn’t intentional – although why the cunt of a referee didn’t stop play immediately I don’t know. He waited for the threat to goal to be cleared before stopping play. Cunt. There is no other word to describe a man who makes that kind of decision. ‘Oh look there’s a player flat out, unconscious with a serious head injury, I’ll just wait to see if Reading can score before I allow him to get attention.’ It defies belief.
Then I looked at the Cech incident again and I could see why Mourinho was so angry. Whether Hunt intended to seriously injure Cech only he will know, but he will never admit it if he did and any other view is going to be subjective – clearly mine is both subjective and biased. However, I’m prepared to give the Reading player the benefit of the doubt, I don’t think he intended to put Cech in hospital, or really cause him a serious injury. But I do most definitely think Hunt was reckless, intentionally reckless.
He was fired up, it was twenty seconds into the game, he thought ‘I’ll give that flash Chelsea bastard a little “Welcome to Reading”‘, not a knee to the head, but perhaps a foot left in, to rough him up a bit. Too late Hunt realised if he collided with Cech it was not going to be “Welcome to Reading”, but more like “Welcome to Accident and Emergency”. Why do I think that? Because the stupid little Hunt should have hurdled Cech; by staying on the ground he had to collide with Cech and he must have known that. A fair challenge to win the ball? Not in a million years. Never. He wanted to leave his foot in. Plain and simple.
It’s like when some nutter drives a car way too fast, shoots a red light and injures a pedestrian. The driver didn’t mean to do it but it was reckless and he should not have done it. Players give out these little “Welcomes” all the time, usually it’s the burly centre half going through the back of the nippy striker – you’ll often hear the commentators laughing about it. But the difference here is that there was no chance of not causing some kind of injury to Cech. It turned out to be a fractured skull, I think what was intended was more like a few bruises.
Then the utter cunt of a ref made Cech leave the pitch. Cech was practically unconscious, had taken a blow to the head hard enough to fracture his skull and the ref insisted he left the pitch. Unbelievable. The ref should be demoted to the Conference and Hunt should become rhyming slang. He intended to “do” Cech, not as badly as he did but, in my opinion, that is what flashed through his mind. I doubt the FA will do anything, it isn’t a Ben Thatcher, it isn’t conclusive enough for that. But it was most definitely reckless and even if Hunt escapes punishment he will know his adrenaline fuelled stupidity put a fellow professional in hospital with a fractured skull. I really hope the little Hunt plays in the return game at Stamford Bridge.
Meanwhile my thoughts are with Cech.
