Blackburn Rovers v Newcastle United - Peter White's big match preview

RECENT statistics have highlighted an unusual trend in the Premiership.

More forwards are falling foul of referees, with at least one famous exception - Alan Shearer.

The former Rovers striker returns to Ewood tomorrow pursued by what to all intents and purposes is a lynch mob following his much-publicised clash with Neil Lennon at Filbert Street.

Yet Carling Opta's ratings show that Shearer has committed, on average, only two fouls per game.

Or is it that referees take a more lenient attitude with the England captain? It certainly seemed to happen during Bryan Robson's reign. Perhaps it is an unwritten rule among officials.

The fact is, however, that the man who inherited Shearer's blue and white number nine shirt Chris Sutton commits more fouls than his predecessor.

Yet, despite the fact that Sutton is ranked among the Premiership's "bad boys" by the statisticians, would anyone really describe him as one of the villains of the game?

Sutton does not have people as high in the game as Glenn Hoddle to speak up for him as Shearer had following the uproar over the infamous Filbert Street video.

But he is certainly as much sinned against as sinning. Interestingly, last season's final foul count saw Shearer top with 81, Sutton fourth on 72 and a couple of other forceful strikers, Mark Hughes and Duncan Ferguson, in the top five. All are typical old-fashioned centre forwards, but today's game increasingly seems to have little room for the rough and tumble between the hard men who used to wear the number five and nine shirts.

And refs show no consistency in their judgment of offenders.

Strikers, for years bludgeoned into submission by defenders clattering through them from the back, have learned to survive and the clampdown by some referees on brutal tackling has also helped them.

Perhaps they are now being penalised for getting their retaliation in first not least via the art of 'backing-in', a tactic honed to near-perfection by Shearer and practised by Sutton and the rest.

But to label the likes of Shearer - whatever the apparent leniency extended to him by officials - and Sutton 'dirty' is nonsense.

You can almost sense some of football's real desperadoes choking on their cow pies. Incidentally, for what it's worth, I do not believe Shearer deliberately intended to boot Lennon in the face.

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