Weeks after the horrible injury suffered by 19-year old Aaron Ramsey away at Stoke City, Arsenal midfielder Abou Diaby was speaking to the Evening Standard on how “disgraceful” some teams approach their games against the Gunners. Having suffered a broken leg and a dislocated ankle against Sunderland in 2006, the 23-year old knows what it means to be the victim of a nasty challenge and highlighted how these has to stop.

The Frenchman explained that it’s in the nature of English football to go for every ball with tenacity, adding how the player’s intent is not to cause damage when doing so, but, he also added how all the severe injuries suffered by Arsenal should make people reflect.

Diaby said:

I don’t think we always get enough protection. The way some teams play against us is disgraceful, in my opinion, and they can sometimes take advantage of this lack of protection and go in hard on us – which is why these bad things continue to happen. In the last couple of years, teams have tried to intimidate us by playing very strongly, kicking us and things like that.

But how far can this kind of thing go? We’ve seen three cases of this in the last four years – me, Eduardo and Aaron. We know English football has a lot of physical engagement and that’s part of the game – and we know that nobody goes in with the intent of injuring a fellow player, but when people are breaking their legs like this it is too much.