Big Ron and the Curse of the Reducer

The pre-meditated crunching tackle can turn a game. Ron Atkinson used to call it a ‘reducer’. With one act of measured violence a player can rouse both the crowd and his teammates. It is particularly important for supporters, who, above all else, want to see demonstrations of commitment – confirmation that the club’s ’cause’ is as important to the players as it is to us. This desire even has its own chant: “Get into ‘em/Fuck ‘em up”.

But the pursuit of the reducer was at least partly to blame for the sendings off of both Jordi Lopez and Nathan Dyer last Saturday. Lopez, with the crowd on his back after another underwhelming performance, started lunging at anything in a red and white shirt. The daft – and harsh – nature of Dyer’s second yellow (for kicking a dead ball back a couple of yards in injury time) has led many to overlook the equally unneccessary way he earned his first card (a clumsy sliding challenge). While some are calling Lopez’s unavailability for the next match a blessing in disguise, Dyer’s absence will be felt in Doncaster tonight.

Just as they always want to see the reducer, most fans, certainly the ones who sit near me in the East Stand, want and expect our strikers to chase down hopeless balls and hassle goalkeepers. Fulfilling these rituals may leave the players knackered, or stranded miles offside if we attack quickly from a keeper’s kick, but that is considered relatively unimportant. What is important is that the our man has shown willing. Unlike the reducer and Marcel Desailly, Big Ron didn’t have a name for aimless, crowd-pleasing running. I’ll call it the ‘Kuyt’.

It was Jason Scotland’s refusal to ‘Kuyt’ about that made him unpopular with the denser elements of our support. He also failed to drool over his badge for two minutes everytime he scored. But I hope those who gave Big Jase a hard time are honest enough now to see that we are significantly worse off for having shipped him out.

There is a place in football for both the reducer and the Kuyt, especially when club morale is as low as ours is at the moment. But large sections of our support overvalue the importance of these elements of the game. They can have temporary benefits (increased crowd noise, sense of momentum) but can also have permanent costs (red cards, lack of positional discipline). In rewarding this behaviour we may be damaging our chances on the pitch.

But the damage being inflicted with the reducer and the Kuyt is nothing compared to our most dangerous crowd activity: the cries of “sssshhhooooooooot” every time Tate gets into the opponent’s half. Yes, I was there when he scored that beauty against Preston last year, and, yes, it was funny for a couple of games after that. But it must stop. Please make it stop.