You're playing against a team whose players hit the deck if you so much as breathe in their general direction, with a referee officiating who has decided that football is a non-contact sport.
So what do you do?
Do you:
(a) Stay on your feet, refusing to dive in to tackles which could earn you a yellow card
(b) Pick and choose the challenges you make in the knowledge that at some point during the game you're liable to pick up a booking and you don't want it to happen too early
(c) Make stupid tackle after stupid tackle, antagonise the ref and get yourself sent off, leaving your team with ten men?
In Jermaine Pennant's case the answer was (c), an answer which makes him look a fool and makes calls for him to be awarded international honours look hopelessly misguided.
There can hardly have been a single Liverpool fan who did not expect him to get sent off after he picked up his first early booking.
And with every misguided challenge that followed and every resultant scowl at the referee the odds on him being dismissed became shorter and shorter.
When he launched into the tackle that finally earned him his marching orders he was guilty of gross dereliction of duty.
Pennant has a responsibility to his team mates, the club and the fans who had travelled to support them and he failed to live up to it.
It was a challenge which did not need to be made but he still made it - the suspicion being that he was thinking of himself and how hard done to he'd been rather than his team.
None of us should be surprised though because this has been coming.
Against Aston Villa on the opening day of the season he picked up a needless booking for launching into the back of Ashley Young when the ball was on the halfway line.
The yellow card should have calmed him down but, like last night, it didn't and minutes later he risked dismissal by shoving Wilfred Bouma in a daft skirmish after the ball had gone.
On that occasion, Mike Riley gave him the benefit of the doubt, deciding that a severe talking to was the order of the day. Pennant had got away with it and he should have used his narrow escape as an opportunity to learn his lesson.
Last night proved that he hasn't.
The funny thing is, Javier Mascherano probably made twice the number of fouls that Pennant committed last night but never suffered the same fate.
That's because Mascherano is a top professional who knows how to stay on the right side of the referee.
If he makes a foul he accepts the referee's decision and gets on with the game. More often than not he uses the Sunday League technique of "helping" his victim to his feet, making the ref believe he really is a nice fella after all, despite the two footed lunge he committed just seconds earlier.
Pennant, on the other hand, never accepts a decision. He scowls at the ref, has a pop at him and creates an image of himself (rightly or wrongly) as a player who has been overtaken by arrogance.
So is it any surprise that referees take great delight in booking him?
At the moment, Pennant is in the same boat as the likes of El Hadji Diouf, Robbie Savage and Ashley Cole in that they only have to look at an official the wrong way and they are likely to be booked.
That might not be fair but it's the way it is and Pennant has dug this hole for himself.
He needs to have a look at the way Mascherano conducts himself on the pitch and learn from it. If he does he will realise that you are still able to get stuck in, and even make fouls, without leaving yourself wide open to daft yellow cards and running the risk of letting your team mates down.
And if he doesn't learn?
Then he'll soon find he'll be picking up needless yellow and red cards at another club.
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Luke wrote...
Words fail me about Pennant's actions, it was immature, infantile, irresponsible, infuriating...how many more adjectives do you need?
Yes, the Portuguese feign with the best of them, writhe with the best of them, cheat with the best of them, but we know all this already.
He let his teammates, the fans and the club down last night.
Not that he reads blogs and comments, but I'd like him to know how disgusted every Liverpool fan is with his behaviour.
Porto were there for the taking last night, even allowing for the woeful 60 minutes we served up prior to his sending off, yet his dismissal meant we had to cling on.
The lad hasn't got a brain in his head, and I don't think he ever will.
Being a Liverpool player is about being professional, using a bit of nouse, giving everything for your teammates, and if you can't do that, you should be shown the door, no matter how much talent you've got.
People were moaning about Mclaren not picking him last week, do me a favour, would you want that liability swanning down the right wing for you?
No wonder Yossi Benayoun is getting miffed with not getting a game.
For attutude, look at Kuyt. Compare that to Pennant. The gulf is so huge it makes you weep.
Posted by: Luke | September 19, 2007 9:32 AM