What a difference a week makes eh?
This time last week, Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the toast of the town, the serial winner who almost single-handedly turned a bang average United performance into a cup-winning one. Fast forward 7 days and he's looking at a ban of at least 3 games for chucking an elbow into Tyrone Mings' temple.
The incident shouldn't come as a surprise of course. Zlatan has had many previous instances of being a hard nut. And it also shouldn't be a surprise given that barely a minute earlier he had had his head trodden on by Tyrone Mings. However it is symptomatic of footballers in general to try and prove they're a hard man, and you see it at every level of the game.
Even at the amateur level I play at on a Saturday the nicest bloke in the world can turn into a right knobhead as soon as the first whistle is blown. It's as if we feel like if we can prove we're the toughest guy out there we have a better chance of winning, and in many cases that's probably true. If you think about intimidating your opponent, impressing your authority on a game, and creating a bit of an aura about yourself, you can definitely make yourself harder to beat and get in the other team's head. But there are ways to go about it.
Every week you'll hear teams before a match say "let's not get on the ref's back early doors, keep him on our side", but as soon as the first challenge goes in, or the first dodgy call goes against you that's it. The world is against us, we're fired up, and someone's about to find out about it.
Zlatan's situation against Bournemouth is a slightly different issue in that during the first 30-odd minutes, he and Mings had been having a bit of a running battle. Then in the aftermath of a Mings tackle on Rooney, he (probably deliberately) stood on Zlatan's head as he was jumping over him. I'm not here to debate whether Mings meant it or not (he did), as that's a topic for another day, but Zlatan clocked who had wronged him, and was not going to have to wait long to exact revenge.
In fact it was at the very next phase of play. I'm not even sure if the two had been marking each other until that point, but of course they found themselves challenging for the same ball at a corner. Zlatan sees Mings coming and throws a big unnatural elbow into his head as he challenges for the ball.
Both players will receive lengthy bans and rightly so.
My issue as a United fan is that in his efforts to get his own back on Mings and prove how hard he is, Zlatan has now seriously jeopardised our chances in two competitions. If - as looks likely - he receives a three game ban, he will miss two Premier League games at a crucial stage of the season when we're chasing 4th place, and the FA Cup quarter final against the best team in the country.
As probably the most experienced and senior player in the squad, he should be only too aware of how important he's been to the team this season. He's won us games we haven't deserved to win and had it not been for his goals we'd probably be in mid table mediocrity. So to go and get himself banned is irresponsible in the extreme.
The only positive that will come out of Zlatan's inevitable suspension is that Marcus Rashford is likely to get some game time through the middle, where he was so very effective when he broke into the team last season. I hope for the sake of our season that Rashford can do the business, and that Zlatan's absence doesn't simply make the heart grow fonder for his return.