Perhaps it's the greater media spotlight or the increased athleticism of the game but serious injuries and crude fouls are now very much mode du jour in football. Where once Ron 'Chopper' Harris, Nobby Stiles and Graeme Souness were considered the hard men of the game, now everybody's getting in on the over-the-top, studs up, bone shattering, elbow swinging, face-smashing action. Crunch!
The past month has seen high profile injuries to Chelsea goalkeepers Petr Cech, who suffered a fractured skull and 'brain damage', and Carlo Cudicini who was carried off the pitch unconscious. Lower down the leagues Birmingham City's captain Damien Johnson had his jaw broken by a flying elbow in the local derby with West Brom, while abroad a Sedan player, Stéphane Noro, shattered his knee after a challenge by PSG's Pierre-Alain Frau.
While the law-makers have progressively outlawed the tackle from behind and pretty much any confrontation, however mild, the game itself has moved on making the laws somewhat irrelevant.
There are two factors at play. One is the pace of the game itself, which has promoted injury through accident as much as malice. The second is something darker and more sinister: the desperate need to win at all costs.
Today's game is fast, athletic and frenetic. Superior diet, training and professionalism means that the pipe and pint approach of the past has been cast away. No longer can players begin the bender on a Saturday night, ending on a Wednesday morning and still expect to compete at the highest level.
It is often said that Sir Alex Ferguson was shocked to discover the drinking culture present at Old Trafford when he traveled south from Aberdeen in the mid '80s. Few survived in Manchester for long. Similarly, Arsene Wenger quickly eschewed the party-goers in favour of pasta-eating athletes from the continent when he took over at Arsenal.
Today's footballers are expected to be as fit as any other sportsman, often running 10-15km in a 90 minute match while playing at full pace. Alcohol and substance abuse is now limited to the residents of Tony Adams' Sporting Chance clinics, not the post-match warm down.
But this new athleticism has led to a spate of collision related injuries and stress fractures in the modern footballer; think the many broken metatarsals in the England camp as just one example.
The other factor is the character with which the game is now played. The professionals of the '60s and '70s will tell you their sport was hard, physical and sometimes dirty but that it was played in a spirit of camaraderie. That nostalgic view has some element of truth to it.
Football was a community and although rivalries were fierce - and often brutal - the unwritten code of sportsmanship usually prevailed. The punch up was always followed by a pint post-match.
The fact still remains, though, that for the most part the game today is cleaner than in the past. No longer are star players simply kicked out of tournaments as Pelé was in '66 or Maradona in '82.
While FIFA has legislated out of the game the worst aspects of violent play, the pressure of the modern game has changed something. Today the vast amounts money involved mean that players increasingly resort to underhand tactics in order to gain an advantage. The subtler side of the art involves pulling, tripping, pinching, diving, acting and holding - all are spoiling our game both as a spectacle and a sporting contest.
It is that very mentality that seems to push players over the edge to something worse. Did Ben Thatcher really need to charge to into Pedro Mendes at full speed? Certainly not. Could Stephen Hunt have avoided colliding with Petr Cech? Absolutely. But they didn't and while deliberately injuring their opponent may not have been the intended outcome, the end is justifying the means with alarming regularity.
One of the worst aspects of the recent incidents has been the inevitable media war that has been played out. Jose Mourinho, for example, questioned not only the motivation of the Reading player, Hunt, but the treatment afforded to his goalkeeper by Chelsea's hosts and the NHS.
Meanwhile, Steve Bruce called the challenge by West Brom's Paul Robinson as the 'worst he'd seen in ten years of management,' stating that the full-back had deliberately set out to injure the Birmingham captain. Sedan's president Pascal Urano was less restrained calling Frau's challenge 'an attack' and 'a massacre.'
Trial by press is never dignifying.
More to the point the governance of the game is down to the people appointed to do so, not the players, not the managers nor club chairmen and most certainly not the media. Ben Thatcher's eight match ban for assault on Pedro Mendes was almost all down to media pressure placed on the FA. Hunt escaped further punishment despite, not because of, Mourinho's outburst.
There's something worst than the bone breaking challenges and media wars; the whining, pitiless, self-gratifying 'apologies' handed out by the offending parties. Scripted, wooden statements claiming that player A would never deliberately injure player B. Of course you wouldn't.
Perhaps Elton was right all along.
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