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Cheick Tiote – ‘I Think My Discipline Is Getting Better…’

11 years ago
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Valentine’s day has long passed but the cards keep coming for Newcastle United’s Cheick Tiote.

Despite picking up his twelfth card of the season on Saturday (to go with the twenty nine in his first two seasons at NUFC), speaking to the Mirror, Cheick thinks he is improving with regard to discipline:

“I don’t know why I was booked (at Swansea), I didn’t touch anyone – I tried to take the ball.

I think I get punished sometimes because people know that I’ve already got a lot of bookings in England. On Saturday I got a booking but I wasn’t at fault.

I just need to concentrate on my game and not let this affect me.

I think that my discipline is better than last season, I just need to keep doing the same things and continue to improve in that way”.

I’m a big fan of the Ivory Coaster and it is true that he didn’t make contact on this occasion but his studs were in very close proximity to the Swansea player’s head!

Cheick is right about reputations and we’ve seen all too often opposition players getting away with some nasty tackles because they have a positive image when it comes to discipline, as in ‘that nice Frank Lampard, David Beckham, Stevie G’ wouldn’t do anything like that in purpose’, would they?

For a player to get a reputation though, you have to accept that this reputation hasn’t landed on them as some kind of mystery.

It isn’t even the crunching tackles that annoy me about Tiote, it is when he stupidly taps somebody’s ankles in a non-threatening part of the pitch and gets another cheap card for his collection.

It is hardly an ideal situation when your two holding midfielders both get early yellows like Tiote and Cabaye did on Saturday, it has to inhibit their games in some way and/or leave them vulnerable to a second card.

Cheick needs to keep his ‘competitiveness’ but also get clever.

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