EWOOD Park legend Bryan Douglas has blasted Danny Murphy’s ‘disrespectful’ attack on Blackburn Rovers and has called for the midfielder to be ‘hauled over the coals’ by the game’s chiefs.

The Fulham midfielder launched a verbal assault towards Rovers boss Sam Allardyce, claiming he was responsible for a ‘brainless’ physical approach of his side that was kicking players off the pitch.

Wolves boss Mick McCarthy and Stoke City manager Tony Pulis were also targeted in Murphy’s extraordinary rant but Douglas, still a regular at Ewood, has dismissed his accusations as nonsense.

Douglas said: “He is talking rubbish and he should be embarrassed by what he has come out with.

"Any manager worth their salt wants their players to compete. But we are no thugs.

“Of course we compete on the field but you look through our team and I can’t think of one player you would consider a hard man.

"We tackle but within the laws of the game. Perhaps we could do with a few bigger tackles being made.

“He should be hauled over the coals for this, by both Fulham and the FA.

"It is not up to him to start talking about other teams and if I was his manager Mark Hughes I would be furious.

"Mark Hughes’ teams were not exactly shy of a tackle.

“Danny Murphy is just a run of the mill player anyway.

"He is better off shutting his mouth and concentrating on his game.

"Who knows, he might want to play for Rovers one day.”

Douglas, who made more than 500 appearances for Rovers between 1954 and 1969, came up against his fair share of hard men during his playing days.

And, while accepting tackles will always be mis-timed, he insists all claims that tackling is getting increasingly dangerous are just “pure nonsense”.

He said: “Tackling is no worse than it was in my day. Believe me I got kicked all over the place at times but players are just protected now.

“I was at the Wolves game the other week when Karl Henry was sent off for his challenge on Jordi Gomez.

"It looked bad but it looks worse because the players are so quick now, you mis-time a tackle and it will look bad.

“I’m not even sure he really touched him and if it was me I would just have given him a yellow.

"Players don’t go out to hurt people and Danny Murphy is the one who needs to take a look at himself.”

Murphy has already received two yellow cards this season and also has the 58th most amount of Premier League cautions of all time.

He has also been sent off three times but still felt qualified to slam what he viewed as Premier League rough-house tactics.

He said: “Look at Stoke, Blackburn and Wolves. You can say they’re doing what they can to win the game but the fact is that the managers are sending players out so pumped up that inevitably there are going to be problems.

“You can look at the players and blame them. But every team has a captain and a manager who is in charge.

"The pace some of the players are going into tackles is ridiculous.

“There are no brains in the players doing that. But the thing I think people miss, is that it’s the managers who dictate what the players do and how they behave.

“You get managers sending teams out to stop other sides from playing, which is happening more and more.”