Very Specific Football Question No.62: Is Marcos Rojo going to have someone’s eye out?

What do Stefano Okaka, Kevin de Bruyne and Steven Pienaar have in common? It isn’t their level of ability, or their favoured brand of shinpads, or their shared love of Radiohead. Don’t be silly. It’s simpler, albeit no less surprising, than that. It’s that they all have worse disciplinary records than Marcos Rojo this season.

This doesn’t mean De Bruyne has been kicking people. Like Okaka and Pienaar, he has picked up a fairly restrained four Premier League yellow cards since August. A standard amount for players who tend not to get involved in tackling.

But Rojo, who likes tackling very much, has received one booking less. The Argentine is down there on three yellow cards with the likes of Nolito and Willian.

This must mean that either he tackles with exceptional accuracy, or something else is going on.

This has been a season of extraordinary success for the Manchester United defender, who has carved out a regular place in Jose Mourinho’s backline despite fierce competition, and the fact he had previously been consigned to the deadwood scrapheap along with Memphis Depay, Morgan Schneiderlin and other Red Devils rejects.

However, with this success has come controversy, and an accusation that Rojo perhaps likes tackling a bit too much.

The 26-year-old’s exuberant approach was first highlighted during a match against Everton at Goodison Park in December, when his two-footed tackle on Toffees midfielder Idrissa Gueye earned him one of those three bookings.

But many observers thought it should have been more, such as Watford striker Troy Deeney who said Rojo “strikes me as someone who’s a bit scared of getting hurt himself”. What Troy Deeney had to do with it, we’re not sure.

Ten days later, Rojo’s reputation as a possibly bad man was cemented when he made an almost identical two-footed challenge on Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha.

Variously described as a “horror tackle”, “X-rated” and a “wild lunge”, refereeing god Howard Webb said Rojo had “endangered Zaha’s safety”, but a booking was again the punishment.

Then, in Monday’s FA Cup tie, Rojo appeared to stamp on Chelsea’s Eden Hazard. Despite appearing to share some similarities with an offence for which Bournemouth’s Tyrone Mings recently received a five-game ban, Rojo was cleared of violent conduct.

Pundits from the top of the food chain (Alan Shearer) to the bottom (Stan Collymore) queued up to give the FA a good slamming, while Mings simply tweeted “Lol”.

Somehow, Rojo keeps on annoying people with his tackling while maintaining his squeaky clean disciplinary record.

So is he a menace or society, or merely a master in the art of defending?

On the premise that every accused man is innocent until proven guilty, Rojo can hold his head high. His tackling has been tough, certainly, but in the view of Premier League officials it has been overwhelmingly fair.

However, on the premise that there is no smoke without fire, and that there is one rule for Man United and one rule for everyone else, and some other popular premises, Rojo is a dangerous individual.

As his tackling appears to become increasingly reckless, emboldened by a repeated lack of censure, it may be only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt. Like children left to play with pointy objects, this could be a disaster waiting to happen.

But then it could also be argued that Rojo is a kind of tackling genius. For those who complain that tackling “has gone out of the game”, here is a man who dives in with gay abandon and gets away with it. Despite playing in an era rigged against his style of play, he is tackling with such precision that the authorities can’t touch him.

Rojo has made little attempt to quell his growing notoriety. Instead, he recently posted a photo of the murderous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar on Instagram, quoting the gangster thus: “Only those who went hungry with me and stood by me when I went through a bad time at some point in life will eat at my table.”

It’s uncertain what this is supposed to mean (and Rojo was subsequently forced to remove the post following complaints), but what’s clear is that this untamed animal is currently having Premier League attackers for dinner.

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